Back room services

As the financial year begins to draw to a close the normal events and reminders start to pop in to our inboxes. The joys of the annual stock take, reminders about completing mandatory training and the requirements to complete career conversations ( Appraisals) with staff all signify this time of the year as much as the first mince pies in the shops indicate the coming of Christmas.

Most of my blogs focus on our operation team and responses to incidents but I thought perhaps I should look at the "backroom" services. these are essential to the running of a large organisation like ours their hard work and support behind the scenes enables us to respond and deliver high quality patient focussed care.

So who do we start with? I think our scheduling team who are tasked with getting the correct people in the right place to provide 24/7 cover are a core function. Wait.... what's that the fleet team ensuring we have vehicles for staff to go on. NO.. No ... our stores team ensuring that our staff have drugs and consumables to use once deployed to a shift and on a vehicle. The HR team for recruiting those staff in the first place.......the research team  for ensuring we are using best evidence based practice running alongside the Clinical team who work with all our local stakeholders to develop care pathways and also contribute to national programs. What about our resilience team who ensure we are able to respond to significant or major incidents, provide expert support and ensure we can continue to deliver business as usual during significant incidents. We also have a 24/7 logistics desk which a "one stop shop" for accessing our backroom teams out of hours. Alongside this like any normal business we have a procurement team, finance team, payroll, and all the normal everyday administration functions, all of whom contribute to the day to day running of SWASFT and delivery of patient care.

As you can see this is just the tip of the iceberg of the teams that ensure operations can deliver the  clinical care to our patients. If I have not mentioned your team directly I apologise.

I have not mentioned our clinical hubs, 111 and the urgent care service which all form part of the SWASFT family delivering care to the residents and visitors to the south west.

The other thing the end of the financial year tends to signify is the start of the holiday seasons and the associated increase in population and call volume.

Just in case your wondering 281 days until Christmas!!!!!

Stay safe