Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (MCHT), like many similar medium-sized district general hospital trusts, has had a problem with staff absenteeism. The Trust’s rolling average, despite being well within the target of 4.51%, which was previously set by clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) and NHS North West, steadily increased from 2007 to 2012.
The horizon-scanning blogs and bulletins are an initiative from the LIHNN network of NHS libraries in North-West England. They are not a traditional current-awareness service but aim to highlight the latest developments, trends and technologies which will have an impact on practice in the future. This bulletin is compiled by John Gale, JET Library, Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
The Cheshire Occupational Health Service (COHS) was established during 2008 as a collaborative service serving two Acute Trusts namely; Mid Cheshire Hospitals Foundation Trust (MCHT) and East Cheshire Trust (ECT) and two PCTs. Formally launched on 1 April 2009, the service is growing to include neighbouring NHS organisations, public and private sector organisations, including The Christie NHS Foundation Trust, beating stiff competition from commercial rivals.
The Trust adopted a Coaching for Quality Strategy which included a commitment to developing a coaching programme across the Trust to allow trained coaches to support, challenge, develop and build success in all areas of the organisation. In addition, it was accepted in the strategy that coaching would become the preferred leadership approach.
An established two-tier in-house Leadership & Management Development programme at Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust supports the development of internal leadership talent as part of their Talent Management Strategy.
Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust introduced competency-based safe medicines management training for all nursing staff and non-medical prescribers in May 2012. The aim is to improve understanding of medicines management and thereby reduce medication errors.The training is delivered as a single three hour face-to-face, interactive session to groups of up to twenty staff. The trainers are senior pharmacists and senior pharmacy technicians.
Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust introduced training for healthcare assistants (HCAs) in April 2011. The initial drive for an improvement in the training of HCAs arose from recognition that this workforce received very little tuition prior to working on acute care wards.The programme is a mandatory three-day training programme for all newly recruited HCAs. It covers a range of topics across nine core clinical skills, and includes both theoretical and practical teaching sessions.