Issue 251, 6 January Issue 270, 18 May 2012

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1 Issue 251, 6 January 2012 June and her inspirational team raise awareness for Breast Cancer June Baker, Occupational Therapist, (OT) at the RLI, is raising awareness for breast cancer by taking part in this year s Queen s Diamond Jubilee Celebrations. June is a breast cancer and malignant melanoma survivor and a member of Paddlers for Life Dragon Boat Team, which promotes health, fitness and well-being following a cancer diagnosis, by paddling on Lake Windermere. June and her inspirational team members, along with their pink Dragon Boat Artemis named Diana, are extremely pleased and excited to have been selected to be part of the Queen s Diamond Jubilee Flotilla Celebrations on the Thames on Sunday 3 June. They will be flying the flag and raising awareness for Breast Cancer and Survivorship. 1,000 boats are taking part in this historic occasion and paddlers will have to row 13 miles at 4.5 knots, so serious training has been taking place on Lake Windermere for the team to build up their strength, stamina and fitness levels. June and her team have been awarded the Inspire logo by the this year s Olympics, which awards exceptional projects that have done something special in their local communities. They will also feature tonight (Friday 18 May) on the BBC s One Show to mark the arrival of the Olympic Torch in Great Britain. The paddlers for Life will also be escorting the Olympic torch down Lake Windermere on Thursday 21 June. June would like to say thank you to her collegues in OT, Cardiac Rehab and the staff at the Breast Care Unit at the RLI for all their continued support of her and the charity Paddlers for Life. Ian s Olympic fundraising challenge continues This weekend, Ian will be taking part in the Windermere marathon, the third event as part of his mammoth Olympic challenge. He has already completed the London Marathon and then after only six days, completed the Yorkshire Three Peaks Challenge. Ian battled with terrible weather during the Three Peaks and fell four times due to the slippery conditions caused by the constant rain and raging 40 mile per hour winds. He battled through and completed the challenge in a fantastic time of five hours and ten minutes. Ian s final two challenges include him taking part in the Lancaster Castle marathon on 24 June and the national Three Peaks cycle challenge on 6 July, where he will be cycling a total of 450 miles over two days. You can show your support and sponsor Ian by visiting his just giving page at All funds recieved will go to the Coronary Care Unit at the RLI and Unique Kids, which is a school in Lancaster for children with special needs.

2 Are you interested in contributing to the education of doctors? As part of their final year exams, medical students are assessed on their history taking and examinations skills with real patients. Each year, we need volunteers with a variety of health issues such as medical, surgical, gynaecological, gastric and urological conditions who are willing to tell their story or be examined by a medical student whilst they are being assessed. The exams (named LOCAS) are taking place at the Queen Victoria Hospital in Morecambe on 27 and 28 June If you, your friends or family are interested in helping or would like more information, please contact Lisa Smith or Janet Bolton, in Clinical Skills on ext or [email protected]/[email protected]. You can also download a LOCAS leaflet for more information, by clicking here. Do you need a little help? Life can be full of challenges. Whether related to work, family, relationships or money, these aspects of our lives can be managed with more confidence when you draw on the experience and support of others. The Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) is here to make your life easier. With just one phone call, you can access a wide range of information and advisory services. Your time is precious - so let us help you make the most of it. The EAP, offers a range of services including: legal team, financial team, counsellors and general advisors. EAP also offers a website giving you an alternative way of accessing the information and advice you need. You can use it any time, from anywhere. It s easy to navigate and the information is presented in a series of easily digested and printable fact-sheets. The service is completely independent,impartial and confidential. You can be assured that nothing discussed between you and your Personal Advisor will ever be communicated to anyone else. For more information about the EAP please click here or call the 24 hour hotline on /Minicom You can also visit entering the username morecambe and the password life. is now available on our website We are now uploading each edition of to our website, as well as sharing it via Facebook and Twitter. Each week, our staff are able to read about our latest news, service developments, staff appointments and success stories from across our hospital sites and we would like to share these stories with our patients and members of the public. You can access by visiting the media centre on the website or by clicking here. Dont forget, we always like to hear from you, if you have any stories you would like including in a future edition of, you can contact the Communications Team on ext or [email protected]

3 Do you have a Trust mobile phone? The majority of staff who have a Trust moblie phone have now been transferred onto the Orange network and have been supplied with a new mobile phone (except Blackberry users). The costs of calls and text messages under the new contract are shown below. Orange to Orange calls (eg, one Trust Mobile to another Trust Mobile) are free, however, please be aware that calls to Trust extension numbers do incur costs. Whilst 2p per minute doesn t sound like a great deal of money it adds up to a significant amount when multiplied across all the mobile phones in the Trust. If you are calling an internal number, please use a land line to make the call, where possible, not your mobile. Standard Charge Orange to UK landlines 2p per minute Orange to Orange 0p per minute Orange to other UK 7p per minute mobile networks Orange to voic 0p per minute SMS rate 3p per message The Health Informatics Department will be contacting staff who have a Trust Blackberry to arrange transfer onto the Orange network soon. Patient records are everyone s responsibility The availability of healthcare records are vital to our ability to provide appropriate care to our patients and to meet an obligation to give access to healthcare records under both the Data Protection Act 1998 Subject Access Provisions and the Access to Health Records Act It is vital that all movements of healthcare records are tracked to ensure they can be found quickly and efficiently when required. All staff who request casenotes and hold them within their departments have a responsibility to trace them both in and out of their department and to record the following details on the tracer book or card. For incoming records, the patient s RTX number and the date of arrival should be recorded. For outgoing records, the patient s RTX number, the release date, arrival location and the name of the staff member requesting the notes should be recorded. While the Medical Records Staff remain vigilant, it is becoming more and more difficult without these details for patient records to be located in a timely fashion. We appreciate your cooperation. The new slips, trips and falls policy is available The slips, trips and falls policy has been reviewed and is now available on the Health and Safety page of the intranet, or by clicking here. The policy covers patients, staff and visitor falls and includes falls risk assessment, bedrails risk assessment, falls care plan and guidance for a suspected spinal injury as well as guidance on nonpatient falls.

4 Issue 269, 11 May 2012 The sky is the limit for our Oncology nurses On Saturday 16 June 2012, Katy Bell, Corinne Rowbotham and Rachel Onion, Nurses in Oncology, will be doing a Sky dive for Rosemere Cancer Foundation, a local cancer charity which raises funds for extra equipment and facilities for cancer patients in Lancashire and South Cumbria. If you would like to make a donation and help Katy and the team reach their target, you can do so by visiting The Olympic torch is on its way On Saturday 19 May, the London 2012 Olympic torch will start its journey from Lands End, Cornwall to Carlisle on Wednesday 20 June, before moving towards Bowness-on-Windermere on 21 June and Kendal, Morecambe and Lancaster on 22 June. A total of 8,000 torchbearers will take the torch on its 70 day journey ending with the opening ceremony at the Olympic Park, London on 27 July To find out more information about the event, visit Informed for the future Come along to an awareness session being run by the Information team throughout June and July. You will gain an insight into how mortality rates are produced, how Payment by Results and best practice works, learn more about Advancing Quality, Operating Framework and much more. The one hour will take place at WGH on 26 June, the RLI on 27 June, FGH on 29 June and 2 July and RLI on 5 July. You can book onto a session during these days, by clicking on the learning and development icon on your desktop, adding a booking and selecting Information Security training - informed for the future. Advancing Quality and Commissioning for Quality and Innovation Advancing Quality (AQ) is a regional scheme as part of Commissioning for Quality and Innovation (CQUIN), which rewards excellence by linking a proportion of providers income to the achievement of quality improvement goals. Areas the AQ schemes will focus on include pneumonia, hip and knee replacement, acute myocardial infarction, heart failure and stroke. The principle of all of the CQUIN schemes is to aim for continuous quality improvement, resulting in better outcomes. The schemes are used in conjunction with wider work on improving quality, safety effectiveness, user experience and innovation. Although the care given to a patient is tailored to their individual needs, clinicians from across the region have agreed a number of key things should happen, which, if carried out at the same time and in the same way for every patient, will ensure patients are receiving the best possible care when treated in these AQ focus areas.

5 Organ Donation for the 21 st Century Seminar: Monday 21 st May, 5:30pm, Education Centre RLI Speakers include Professor Bobbie Farsides Professor of Clinical and Biomedical Ethics at Brighton and Sussex Medical School and member of Nuffield Council on Bioethics Dr Mark Wilkinson Clinical Lead on Organ Donation, Royal Lancaster Infirmary Dr Sara Fovargue Senior Lecturer in Law, Lancaster University. Rev Stephen Tranter Hospital Chaplain at Royal Lancaster Infirmary. Prof Anne Garden Head of Lancaster Medical School who will chair the event. Questions to be explored: How far should the Government and Doctors go in trying to encourage people to donate their bodily material? Is it acceptable to offer people money in return for their organs? What should the role of government and doctors be in responding to the demand for bodily material? What are the barriers to organ donation and how can they be removed? How can the need for donated organs be reduced? This seminar is the first event of a number of wider activities relating to medical ethics taking place at Lancaster Medical School. Aims of the seminar are to foster discussion about the ethical aspects of medicine, as well as offer the opportunity to establish connections between those at the University and the local hospitals. Food and drink will be available for those attending the seminar. Presentations will begin at 6pm. Please contact Dr Laura Machin ([email protected]) to register your interest in attending