Staff engagement is central to providing quality patient care, and this is at the heart of The Christie Commitment - Victoria Hughes

Victoria Hughes, principal radiographer and Christie Commitment champion

Victoria Hughes

I have been principal radiographer in The Christie radiology department since September 2015. My role involves supporting the radiology services manager, clinical director and business manager with the management of the radiology service, which includes plain film X-ray, interventional radiology, ultrasound, CT and MRI scanning, as well as providing nuclear medicine and PET/CT reporting. 

We undertake over 55,000 examinations and interventional procedures per year, imaging patients for diagnosis or post treatment follow-up, or as part of clinical trials.

I am also departmental lead for governance, ensuring maintenance of quality throughout the department and responding to any clinical incidents or patient concerns, to make sure we learn from these to constantly improve our service and maintain high standards.

I felt lucky to have the opportunity to come back to the Trust, having previously worked here as a diagnostic radiographer from 1996-2007. The radiology service has grown substantially since then. Since returning, it’s been an exciting time with a new purpose built 3 scanner MRI suite opening last summer, vastly improving the patient experience. The opening of the Integrated Procedures Unit (IPU) later this year, incorporating a new two room interventional radiology suite and ultrasound room, will enable us to integrate more closely with other teams to create a more seamless patient service.

Staff numbers have also increased, with over 100 staff including radiologists, diagnostic radiographers, radiology nurses, radiographic aides, porters, clinical trials team, picture archiving and communications systems (PACS) manager, and secretarial/clerical support. Despite this, the department has retained its close knit family feel and team spirit, and what makes both radiology and the wider Trust such a special place to work is the positive atmosphere and motivation to put patients first which remains constant.

The Trust recognises the importance of staff engagement to this sense of team working and patient centeredness, and developed a set of pledges collectively known as The Christie Commitment, aiming to help staff appreciate how much of a difference they make to patients. On starting in post I was asked to submit a monthly report to our divisional board outlining how the radiology department was meeting the commitment. The pledges cover the areas of:

• Achievement and recognition – thanking staff for doing a good job, and rewarding those who go the extra mile
• Learning and development – ensuring opportunities for personal development and career progression
• Healthy workplace – supporting health and wellbeing of staff and promoting a culture where staff feel able to raise concerns
• Communication and engagement – Good communication processes and staff involvement in decisions affecting them or their service
• Proud of The Christie – aims for staff to be advocates of The Christie both as a place to be cared for and to work, sharing patient feedback, the work of The Christie charity and results of research

I thought it important that all department staff had an opportunity to contribute so began sending a monthly e-mail request to all staff for items to include. Staff positively engaged with this which inspired me to find out more about The Christie Commitment and how we could support this within the department. So I volunteered to become a Christie Commitment champion, one of a team of staff from different departments and professions dedicated to raising awareness of the commitment and staff engagement.

Being a champion involves attending a quarterly Christie Commitment forum, as well as informal lunch-time catch ups in between, for updates on staff engagement events and activities, sharing ideas between departments, and promoting these within our own areas.

Although voluntary, this has also helped in my formal role, increasing knowledge of the Trust through networking with staff I may not otherwise have met, promoting engagement between departments, and providing opportunities to become involved with activities in the wider Trust. These include the staff summer garden party, annual health and wellbeing day, and speaking to new staff at Trust induction about The Christie Commitment and values.

I was fortunate that radiology already had effective engagement processes through regular staff meetings, good communication between team leaders and other staff, and an open door policy for staff to come and raise concerns. We have regular lunchtime education sessions and an early morning journal club. These are organised and run by members of staff and are well attended. We also support professional study leave and attendance at study days and courses for staff development at all levels.

Producing monthly Christie Commitment updates have enabled us to build on this further, with it becoming not only a feedback tool to the Trust about engagement in the department, but a document shared back with the radiology team. In the update we celebrate each other’s achievements, advertise any learning and development  or health and well-being events, and one of the most important elements – ensure all staff are aware of compliments and positive patient feedback, as not all can attend staff meetings each month.

It means a huge amount to us to receive positive comments via patient letters, cards or surveys, as it is so rewarding and motivating to know that the commitment of staff really does make a difference.

As managers in radiology we value staff feedback and ideas for improvement and periodically undertake a departmental staff survey. The most recent in May 2016, identified ideas we were able to action, such as employing an additional porter to improve patient flow and reduce delays, and implementing a staff suggestion box.

Kim Jones, Nazir Majeed and Victoria Hughes

We also encourage staff to take part in the ‘One Week, All Staff’ events run by the Trust, to feed back directly at Trust level, as well as the wider NHS staff surveys. We have added a Christie Commitment section to the monthly staff meeting agenda, to enable sharing of feedback on staff suggestions, and engagement events news from the Commitment forum.

Through promoting the role of the Christie Commitment champions we now have two further volunteers from the department, representing different staff groups within radiology – Kim Jones, radiology specialist nurse and Nazir Majeed, radiographic aide, which is further helping us to engage both with the radiology team and other staff across the Trust.

The radiology team were delighted with the Trust’s recent ‘Outstanding’ CQC result and are extremely proud to have been able to contribute towards this, as it reflects the ethos of the Trust and its commitment to its patients, but also to its staff, which is emphasised within the pledges of The Christie commitment.

For further information about The Christie commitment please email thechristiecommitment@christie.nhs.uk or contact Carol Reah on 0161 446 8423.

The power of small gestures - Graham Lamb

Graham Lamb, Cook Team Manager at The Christie

Graham Lamb

Small gestures can make a big difference - a simple smile and a thank you go a long way. As a member of the catering team at The Christie, we know this only too well, and will always go the extra mile to help our patients. 

What we do is a very important part of the patient experience, but working in a place where everyone has been touched by cancer can be even more rewarding.

That’s one of the reasons why The Christie has set up a serious of monthly meetings for its staff to discuss their feelings and to share their experiences. These meetings are called Schwartz Rounds and I was delighted to have been asked to give a presentation at one recently. The theme of the discussion was the ‘The Power of Small Gestures’. 

At first I struggled to think about what I should speak about. But then I started to think about what we in the catering department actually do on a day-to-day basis and how our department makes a difference to patients, visitors and staff. We do some pretty impressive things and we also understand the power of small gestures.

Every day we come to work and do our jobs but never take the time to appreciate how much hard work, care and dedication we put in, and it is only by reflecting on and talking about it through the Schwartz Rounds that we have the chance to stop and do that, which is quite an eye opening thing to do, and is also very cathartic.

Most people don’t realise how often we are asked to visit patients on the wards when they have specific dietary requirements, or because their treatments or personal preferences mean they can’t always find meals to suit their palate. We often tailor menus to suit individual patients and revisit them every couple of days to plan the meals for the following period. Simply by doing this we find patients are more open to discussing their meals and in some cases, when their preferences may seem a little strange, they feel more comfortable  speaking to us rather than the ward staff because often they haven’t considered the possibility that we can provide alternative choices outside of the standard menu.

Through visiting a ward we get to see a patient over a period of time. It’s very rewarding to see a noticeable improvement in a patient , especially those who are eating properly again through our input. The flip side of this is that it can be very upsetting in a small number of cases to see a patient continue to deteriorate, despite the best efforts of all the doctors and nurses, and of course our own team that works so hard to find choices of food that the patient will want to eat.

Simply by discussing and planning their meals with us, patients feel included and empowered and are more inclined to try and eat their meal because they have had an input into it. 

Through communicating, encouraging and involving the patients we know that we go the extra mile to offer the best service. It is always appreciated by the patients and when they say “thank you”, that gesture always makes what we do worthwhile, no matter how tiring the day has been, we focus on that gesture.

One example of how the catering team has gone the extra mile for patients was when a very poorly patient in the last days of life wanted to get married. We got a call at 11am that morning to say the wedding was taking place at lunchtime and could we provide a wedding buffet, including a wedding cake, to be served at 1pm. How could we refuse a request like that! 

So we pulled together as a team with all the usual mayhem going on around us and managed to deliver a wedding buffet as well as a cake with chocolate balloons, hearts and the couples’ names iced onto the cake. 

Knowing that we had done something so special for someone in their dying days was hugely rewarding and we know that most patients really appreciate that. It’s equally rewarding when the efforts we go to are recognised by our colleagues with a simple thank you – the power of small gestures really can make a big difference, but are all too easily overlooked!

Most people only see the ward service or the restaurant service and don’t appreciate what goes on behind the scenes to ensure those services are delivered on time. For example we serve around 1,500 meals per day to patients and staff, all freshly prepared and cooked on the premises. No microwave meals like a lot of hospitals serve to patients! It’s essential that we send the patient trolleys out to the wards on time and ensure the restaurant service is set up and ready to go each day. We often have buffets to do for meetings and the odd wedding breakfast to provide as well, so team work is essential.

So our days can be interspersed with ups and downs, positive and negative gestures, however, as always, a positive gesture from a patient cancels out anything negative about the day, making our jobs even more worthwhile, and giving us a great deal of job satisfaction. Working at The Christie and helping our patients really is a special experience. 

The Christie is like a jigsaw and we all make up that jigsaw, no matter what job we do. We all form part of that jigsaw and if any piece is missing, the jigsaw can never be completed. Each piece of the jigsaw is also like one of those small gestures, and without the thousands of small gestures everyday, our Christie jigsaw would be incomplete! 

If any nurses are considering working at The Christie I would highly recommend coming to the recruitment open day - Lauren Hunstone

Lauren Hunstone – Critical Care Unit Healthcare Assistant

Lauren Hunstone - Healthcare Assistant

My core inspiration to pursue a career in nursing came from watching how the nurses and staff cared for both my grandmas in the last days of their lives. I then went on to do various nursing home jobs and realised that nursing was definitely the career for me. 

After gaining experience and working for the evening community nursing service I felt I had enough transferable skills to work on a ward. I applied for a number of healthcare assistant posts in hospitals in the Stockport area and had no luck due to my lack of direct ward experience - so my confidence level fell.

Then I saw an advert on Facebook about a recruitment open day at The Christie back in October and as a lot of my nursing colleagues were already aware of my passion to become a nurse they also informed me of this fantastic opportunity.

I started to do some research; phoning the human resources team at The Christie to see what the recruitment day would entail and then did some online preparation as well. They said if I was a suitable candidate and could pass the Maths and English test, I would be interviewed, and if successful at this stage even given a position on the day. 

This was a very exciting prospect and I felt I really needed to do my absolute best to show I was competent to work in a ward based environment and that the skills I had would be beneficial to The Christie.

I also wanted to show I was enthusiastic to learn more in the future. I went through a number of competency based questions with a work colleague, who helped me to prepare for the interview and helped me understand what to expect. 

When the day came I was very nervous, but also excited to see what the day had to offer. It was a 10am start so I got there with plenty of time to spare. I had already filled out the online application form and brought along appropriate identification as advised, so I felt ready and prepared.

The recruitment area was full of lots of staff - all very friendly and welcoming. I could also see that it was going to get very busy, with lots of candidates excited at the prospect of working in such a lovely and positive hospital. 

To me, somebody who wants to study to become a staff nurse, the prospect of working at The Christie was so exciting. Being given the opportunity to work with such inspirational people and able to progress in the future is amazing.

All the candidates were split into small groups and the first thing we did was go on a tour of the hospital with one of the matrons at The Christie, Lyn Bushell. It was so interesting to see all the different departments of the hospital. 

I have been to The Christie before, to visit a relative, however coming back as a possible future member of staff was very different. There is an instant feeling of warmth when you enter The Christie. 

During the tour Lyn told us she had worked in a number of different roles across the hospital in various departments, before becoming a matron. This helped me to realise that The Christie is the kind of place where you are given the opportunity to progress and further your skills in areas that interest you. 

After the tour we took a simple Maths and English test. I was really worried about this, even though I did reasonably well at GCSE. But it was nothing to worry about as the majority of the questions are common sense.

I then had to wait to find out if I had passed the tests - which was the longest 15 minutes of my whole life!! 

Finally, I had my interview. The questions I had gone through with my colleague and the research I had done made me feel really confident as I felt I could answer each question fully. I also felt that the questions I was asked related to my own personal experiences which helped me to respond with relevant details.

A few days later (because so many people had applied) I got a call to say they wanted to offer me a 30 hour contract on Critical Care. This was literally the best news I've ever had. I cried on the phone and couldn't believe that my dream of working in a hospital environment, helping patients like my grandma was actually coming true. 

I have now been working on Critical Care for over two months and I absolutely love it. The experience and skills in caring for critically ill patients is invaluable to my nursing career. Over the next few years I hope to study for a degree in adult nursing.

I know that there is another recruitment open day coming up on 5th March – this time just for qualified staff nurses.

If any nurses are considering working at The Christie I would highly recommend coming to the recruitment open day. It’s a great way to find out what it’s really like to work here, you get to meet some lovely people and they do everything possible to see the full potential in you.

Prepare well for it because you never know what you might get asked, dress smartly, but most importantly good luck!

Staff nurse recruitment open day – Saturday 5th March 2016  from 10am to 2pm. Education Centre, The Christie, Manchester, M20 4BX. Apply at via NHS Jobs.
  

The Board of The Christie is focused on making it a world leading centre for cancer care and research - Kathryn Riddle

Kathryn Riddle - Christie non-executive director

Kathryn Riddle

I joined The Christie Board as an interim non-executive in May 2014 and became a substantive member of the Board a year later. From the very first day I was hooked!

I have been involved with the NHS as a non-executive for over 20 years, but in all that time I have never been directly involved with a hospital and I am delighted to have put that right.

The Christie is a very special place and part of that is undoubtedly because it is a specialist hospital. In other roles I have visited many hospitals and noticed that specialist hospitals or units have unique cultures because of the very specialised nature of their work.

Having said that, The Christie is both unique and very very special.

What makes it so special?

The staff and the patients undoubtedly, but also the volunteers and the people from Manchester and the surrounding areas. If I get a taxi to The Christie, within minutes the taxi driver is telling me how wonderful the hospital is and "how lucky we are to have such a great place on our door step." I have never encountered that sort of praise and loyalty anywhere else!

One day I had lunch in the hospital dinning room and found myself chatting to the man opposite. We both thought the cheese pudding was excellent! He told me that he came to eat here once a week because his wife had been a patient at The Christie for several years and they had made friends and grown to love the place. Now that she was no longer here, being back at The Christie made him feel close to her and he liked to check that the food and general feeling of the place was just as good as it had been for his wife.

The Board of The Christie is impressive, vibrant and totally focused on making the organisation a world leading centre for cancer care and research,  where patients feel safe, comfortable and reassured that they are ‘in the best place '.

The Governors from different surrounding areas want the very best for the patients and are rightly proud and protective of The Christie’s name and reputation.

I have been part of some appointment panels for new staff and have been hugely impressed by the calibre of people being interviewed, not only for their clinical expertise, experience and backgrounds, but for their genuinely caring and compassionate natures. Values matter!

I spent one lunch time with the director of nursing and quality, seeing how protected meal times work and the careful choice of food and quantities all tailored to individual patients’ needs.

On another walk about with fellow non-executive directors and staff, we discovered that chemotherapy treatments are also tailor made for individual patients - an absolute revelation which made me realise that I have so much to learn.

I love the gardens at The Christie, alongside the glass corridor, which are beautiful to look at and full of patients, families and even some staff on sunny days!

The volunteers and Friends of The Christie are truly amazing in their dedication and their extraordinarily imaginative ways of raising money. Bike rides, runs, abseiling, coffee mornings and evening events of all kinds to say nothing of the culinary expertise (my kitchen cupboard is full of Jean's special preserves! Her bramble jelly is just fabulous!) Like other members of the Board I am a Trustee of The Christie charity and I have been so impressed by the generosity of people who want to support the hospital. Through legacies, donations, and imaginative fundraising, thousands of people contribute to the work of this wonderful institution, and every single donation whether it be large or small is very much valued and appreciated.

This is a truly remarkable place, made so special by the people who work here and the patients they serve. I am proud to be a part of it and I have thoroughly enjoyed my first year on The Board.