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SAS doctors (specialist, associate specialist and specialty doctors) are experienced and senior doctors in permanent posts. They have at least four years of full-time postgraduate training, two of which have been in their relevant specialty. To mark SAS Week, we spoke to Dr Leela Reddy... 

I am an Associate Specialist in Rehabilitation Medicine and SAS Tutor/Lead at The Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust. As a senior clinician, I have both clinical responsibilities and other non-clinical roles.

I work autonomously and also work in teams to improve patient care.

The Walton Centre has provided me with different opportunities both in clinical and non-clinical roles. I am a member in the Clinical Audit Group, Medical Education Group and SAS Doctors representative in our Local Negotiating Team. As a representative of this group of clinicians in our Local Negotiating Team, I work to address educational needs, career progression and liaise with the NHS England North West team to support SAS Doctors.

Our Cheshire and Merseyside Rehabilitation Network (CMRN) values my input and gives me opportunities to work with clinical management groups and operational committee teams.

I am an educator and trainer in my role too. I am an Audit Lead in our department, and I am actively involved in research at The Walton Centre. As an SAS Tutor/Lead, I have helped to arrange several courses for SAS Doctors and Locally Employed Doctors in The Walton Centre, through the NHS England SAS development fund to improve their educational needs and develop in their career paths.

The Walton Centre has supported me in all these opportunities to develop leadership and education skills, which in turn benefits patient care. I am proud to be an SAS Doctor, and grateful to my colleagues, our department and all the teams that support and recognise my clinical and leadership roles. I hope we will see more success stories with the support of the entire team in The Walton Centre.

 

Read Specialist and Associate Specialist (SAS) Awareness Week…

The Walton Centre is delighted to have won an NHS Parliamentary Awards for its work with virtual reality in neurosurgical training and education.

The NHS Parliamentary Awards were created in 2018 to celebrate and recognise the outstanding contribution of staff, volunteers and others working in the health and care sector. In the first stage of the awards, MPs nominated healthcare teams and individuals in their local area to highlight their exceptional commitment and achievements working in and with the NHS.

318 MPs across England put forward 918 nominations – a far greater number than in any previous year. The Walton Centre thanks Dan Carden MP for nominating the Trust to recognise their work in training the next generation of surgeons.

There were ten award categories this year which cover innovation and exceptional care right across the breadth of healthcare services.

The Walton Centre won in the Excellence in Education and Training category for its work with the Neuro VR machine.

Virtual reality has led to new and exciting discoveries across many areas of life, including medicine. The Walton Centre is leading the way in the use of VR in neurosurgery with the Neuro VR simulator – the UK’s only such piece of equipment, and one of only 30 in the world.

The Neuro VR, generously funded by The Walton Centre Charity, enables experienced surgeons to develop the latest techniques, taking their skills even further, and allow trainee surgeons to practice safely, yet in a realistic environment.

It is the most advanced neurosurgical simulator training in the world, using high-fidelity images, haptic feedback and both 3d and 2d applications.

Mr Nick Carleton-Bland, Consultant Neurosurgeon and lead in medical education, said: “The installation of the simulator at the UK’s only specialist Trust for neuroscience has allowed The Walton Centre to become a national hub for simulation-based training in neurosurgery, benefiting patients across the country and changing the future of neurosurgery.

“Since its installation, thanks to funding from The Walton Centre Charity, the Neuro VR has been a vital part of training for both medical students, neurosurgical registrars at The Walton Centre and national trainees.

“Through our experience and outreach, we want to lead the way and motivate other centres to follow up and invest in the same kind of training and research, improving the consistency of neurosurgical training and patient benefit, providing a better understanding of neurosurgery and even better patient outcomes.

"We were delighted to be recognised by Dan Carden MP for our work in this area, and the panel of judges to win the national award for education and training."

 

Read Specialist neuroscience Trust wins NHS Parliamentary Award…

As part of Organ Donation Week in late September, The Walton Centre took part in the Race for Recipients.

National figures show that The Walton Centre is regularly one of the top 20 centres for organ donation, contributing to the national effort to save or improve the lives of people desperately in need of a transplant in the UK.

This year staff took part in Race for Recipients which is a challenge to see how many kms they could walk/run as a team throughout Organ Donation Week, to help raise awareness of the incredible gift of organ donation, and to encourage people to confirm their decision on the Register.

Through some amazing staff efforts running, walking, cycling, swimming, rowing and other distance exercise - including a static bike in our Intensive Care Unit, Team Walton finished top of the leaderboard in the region, and second - out of over 180 centres - nationally!

A great effort to raise awareness of a really important subject.

Read The Walton Centre finishes top in the region in the race for recipients…

Today (Wednesday 25 September) is World Pharmacist Day, a day to recognise and celebrate the incredible contributions of our pharmacists across The Walton Centre, Liverpool University Teaching Hospitals and Liverpool Women’s Hospital. Every day, our Pharmacists play a vital role in delivering a professional clinical service to our patients and staff, ensuring that medications are used safely and effectively.

Our pharmacists go beyond dispensing and supply of medicines. They are trusted experts, offering valuable advice, collaborating with clinical teams, and ensuring safe and timely access to medications for our inpatients and at discharge.

They also advise on evidence-based treatment options and work with clinical teams to ensure where two medicines do the same, the most cost effective choice is used. The work of the pharmacists this year is expected to save £1.6m in the hospitals medicines expenditure.

Other roles include driving the medication safety agenda, supporting the development of medicines guidance, delivering a comprehensive training and education programme and ensuring a safe manufacturing service through our Aseptic and Radiopharmacy units and much more!

The world of pharmacy is constantly evolving, our pharmacists stay ahead of the latest advancements, adapting swiftly to new treatments, technology and regulations, all while keeping the needs of our patients at the forefront of everything they do.

Thank you to our team of pharmacists for their continued dedication and professionalism. You make a real difference, and today we celebrate the vital role you play in our patients' lives and in supporting our healthcare teams.

Happy World Pharmacist Day 2024!

Read World Pharmacist Day 2024…

Quality Improvement provides a consistent, systems thinking approach to solving problems and reduce variation, ultimately improving outcomes for patients and organisations. QI is important to the Trust to help us identify key improvements, to ensure we are making our environment safer for staff and patients. As a Trust we aim to provide excellence in Neuroscience – improving quality utilising the tools and techniques available to us through a QI lens can help us achieve our aims of timely, patient centred, efficient and equitable care.

Who is in the Quality Improvement team and what are your roles?

Rebekah Phillips – Associate Director of Operations -  Operational and transformation background with over 20 years NHS experience; Associate Director leading on Quality Improvement and change.

Sam Holman – Deputy Head of Operations - Over 10 years NHS experience in operational practice and performance and an Advanced QI Practitioner.

Clare Moore – Service Improvement Clinical Lead - Over 25 years NHS experience, Clinical specialist with senior nurse experience and an Advanced QI Practitioner.

Craig Stanton – Sustainability Lead - Healthcare sustainability specialist (SusQI), operational background with over 12 years NHS experience.

Hannah Hewson – Quality Improvement Programme Manager, with a psychology background and over 5 years NHS experience.

Zoe Grierson – Quality Improvement and Sustainability Admin Assistant, operational background with over 3 years NHS experience

What projects are the team working on?

We currently have 3 major priority programmes of work:

Digital Health Records

This programme of work will see the Trust transition from a largely paper-based system to a largely paper-lite system. With over 90k case notes, this programme of work is a challenging and protracted task, however, we are approximately 50% complete and we are aiming to be 100% complete by March 2025, which is a huge a achievement for the teams involved in this work! The transition from paper to digital case notes will give clinicians access to patients records, all in one place, to improve quality of care and clinical decision making. This project will also have positive sustainability impacts on the environment and free up estate within the organisation to be re purposed into a staff break room. The Medical Records team have been restructured to support an in-house scanning facility (which is in the process of being set up and tested) so there will be a whole new way of managing paper clinical documentation in the organisation – we know each team are enthusiastic about achieving this. 

Theatre Optimisation

Due to the scale, this programme of work has been broken down into separate phases, with the ultimate aim to increase theatre utilisation and decrease cancellations. This programme of work began, concentrating on the pre-operative pathway and optimising our digital systems to support patients being fit and ready for surgery. Projects within this programme have been the implementation of a one-stop bloods and swabs pathway, optimisation of the high-risk anaesthetic clinic pathway and patient communication via digital means. Successful outputs have been gained already from this work, with patients being seen quicker in clinics and re-visits to the hospital reduced.  

Electronic consent – a pilot of electronic consent has been started with Spinal Consultants and Spinal patients to enhance the information and time required to provide robust and compliant consent for surgery. This involves patients having the time to read, watch videos and digest information at home, with family and friends, before deciding to consent for surgery. Patients are watching videos 5-6 times on average to make sure they are fully informed of the risks and benefits of surgery, which is enhancing our patient experience, reducing anxieties and improving overall Trusts legal compliance when it comes to surgical consent. This will be rolled out further to Cranial, Neurology and Pain patients later this year.

Outpatient Optimisation

Again, due the scale of this programme, there are a number of projects underway to transform outpatients;

Patient Engagement Portal – patients now have access to their own patient portal to access information about their appointments, outpatient letters, maps, contact details and text reminders about their appointments. Patients can now opt to make changes to their appointments via the portal, which reduces the need for patients to wait in a call centre queue to make clinic appointment amendments. The introduction of this portal has seen a 35% reduction in our missed appointments (Did Not Attends DNA) and over 100 new patients seen in clinics every month, which were previously unattended by patients.

Patient Access Centre (PAC) optimisation – a full restructure of the corporate teams (PAC, Medical Records and PAS) has taken place to ensure that the teams have the correct structures and team support to meet the demand of referrals and appointment bookings required. This has been a huge change for the teams who have approached this positively. It has been challenging and still isn’t where we need to be due to recruitment of new posts, however improvements are already being seen and the team have been tremendous in the making of this!

Digital Dictation of clinic letters – Introducing technology to enhance clinical correspondence will result in improved and controlled turnaround times for letters, significantly reduce and potentially eliminate typing backlogs, streamline working practices, improve information governance and support the Trusts paper-lite project. These identified deliverables will allow the Trust to achieve an efficient and sustainable process, enhancing patient and user experience.

Referral Management – it has been recognised by the organisation that efficiencies can be made in how referrals (externally and internally) to the Trust are managed and triaged. A project is underway to address the referral pathways and digital solutions that are currently used to make referral pathways more efficient, safer and robust. Demonstrations are currently taking place with clinical and operational colleagues by an external provider of digital software to support us in doing this. 

Who and what is at the heart of Quality Improvement team?

The team have built a team vision, strongly aligned to the overall Trust vision and aims:

·        To build a robust environment conducive to continuous improvement

·        Never stop looking for ways in which to improve

·        Keep the patient at the heart of every improvement programme

What has been your favourite project you have worked on?

The bed re purposing programme - although this was one of the largest and most difficult projects we have been involved in, the benefits to the multiple cohorts of patients made it so worthwhile. As it was so multi-faceted it gave us the opportunity to work collaboratively with so many different stakeholders both internally and externally, building professional relationships and allowing us to have a better understanding of the importance of each persons role in quality improvement.

What should we expect to see from the team in the next year?

The team will never stop looking for ways in which to improve – whether that be more efficient pathways, better patient experiences or patient safety improvements! There will be some strong outputs from the Outpatient Transformation work that will have benefits realised and showcased, along with a largely digital patient record (and no green case notes).  Patient Portal will be advanced further with the ability for patients to make direct changes to their appointments themselves and the ability to have clinic letters available on the Patient Portal. Voice recognition technology will be embedded and will be starting to be used on ward rounds and within EP2; clinical teams will be supported for the improvements including patient safety incidents and medicines management. We are sure there will be many more exciting things to come for our team!

 

Read Spotlight on... the Quality Improvement team…

Amrit Ramnath, known for his highly successful Indian musical career, has donated a piece of artwork to The Walton Centre after his mother, Indian national treasure Jayashri Ramnath, was treated here for a bleed on the brain last year.

In March 2023, the famed Indian classical singer known as Bombay Jayashri was found unconscious in her hotel room in Liverpool while on tour, and rushed to The Walton Centre with a ruptured aneurysm and grade five subarachnoid haemorrhage (SAH). After a lifesaving six hour operation where the aneurysm was clipped and blood clot removed, Mrs Ramnath stayed in the hospital’s Horsley Intensive Therapy Unit to recover, with her son Amrit by her side.

An SAH is due to a leakage of blood from a blood vessel beneath the arachnoid membrane that covers the brain. It occurs suddenly, usually without warning and can often have catastrophic consequences.

Amrit said: “While she was in a coma, I would sing to her so that she knew someone who loved her was there. When she woke up weeks later, she says she could hear everything! I have a strong connection with her, she is my mother, but also my guide, and our love language is music. I wrote and recorded songs while she was recovering, right there at her bedside, and it’s influenced several songs that I’m releasing soon.

“I remember the day vividly. I was calling her to tell her the news that I’d been asked to compose music for a film in India, but I couldn’t reach her. It turned out that she was already unconscious and being rushed to hospital.

“It was such a stressful and extraordinary time, and they told me to prepare for the worst, as the bleed had been particularly severe. But she was fiercely determined to recover – and she did. I’m so glad she was looked after so well by staff at The Walton Centre. Without their dedication, I dread to think what the outcome would’ve been.”

The songs on Amrit Ramnath’s upcoming EP, called 100,000 Dreams releasing on Friday 23 August 2024, stem from this experience.

Mrs Ramnath went on to make a remarkable recovery, and was able to travel home to recover fully six weeks after her initial operation at The Walton Centre.

Mr Jawad Yousaf, a Consultant Neurosurgeon specialising in skull base and vascular neurosurgery at The Walton Centre, carried out the operation. He said: “Timely treatment for aneurysms and subsequent subarachnoid haemorrhages is crucial in order to give someone the best chance of not only surviving, but surviving well. I am pleased to see patients such as Mrs Ramnath making a fantastic recovery despite the odds.”

Amrit returned to visit the Trust this week to present a piece of artwork to staff, to say thank you for the care they gave to his mother.

Amrit continued: “The artwork describes the view I had while staying in the hospital’s charity-funded relatives’ accommodation, with a few lines from a poem my mother wrote whilst she was recovering in hospital. It’s a token of our love and appreciation for what they did to save my mother. It was fantastic to meet staff at The Walton Centre again and thank them in person.”

The artwork will feature on the wall of the hospital’s courtyard, which also houses other artwork such as the Walton Willow, which marks organ donors at the Trust, and an NHS heart donated during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Dr Anita Krishnan, Consultant Neurologist and Divisional Clinical Director, helped arrange the return visit. She said: “On behalf of The Walton Centre, thank you to both Amrit and Bombay Jayashri for this generous donation of such beautiful artwork. Expressions of gratitude from patients and families is the ultimate accolade for our staff members. This poignant and heartfelt gift will surely hold a special place in our hearts.”

You can listen to his single Kanavugal Kanden from the EP 100,000 Dreams now on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/59xujCFu5zbw5FyjVLlsy8?si=edcfb488ce6240d0

 

-Ends-

 

Notes to editors

Further information, or to arrange an interview, please contact the Communications Team at The Walton Centre on 0151 556 3397 or wcft.communications@nhs.net

The Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust is the only hospital trust in the UK specialising in neurology, neurosurgery and pain services. Although the majority of patients come from Merseyside, Cheshire, North Wales, Lancashire and the Isle of Man, for some specialist treatments of complex disorders we see patients from all parts of the country, referred by their GPs or other neurologists, neurosurgeons and pain clinicians.

The Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust was rated as ‘Outstanding’ by the Care Quality Commission. The independent regulator of all health and social care services in England published its rating on Friday 21 October 2016, following announced and unannounced inspection visits to the Trust in April 2016.

For more information please visit: www.thewaltoncentre.nhs.uk or follow the Trust on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.

The Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust, Lower Lane, Fazakerley, Liverpool L9 7LJ
0151 525 3611

Read Critically acclaimed Indian musician donates artwork to The Walton Centre after mother’s life-saving surgery…

The Walton Centre welcomes medical students each year, who look to gain experience in a Trust specialising in neurology, neurosurgery, spinal services and pain management. 

Hilary Shepherd was a chemistry teacher, before deciding to go back to university to become a medical doctor. 

Hilary said: “Though teaching is a profoundly rewarding career, I found that I felt more at home on a ward than in a classroom. At times, being a teacher was isolating, whereas being part of a busy hospital with each day being completely different from the next drove me to want to re-train.” 

Prior to starting medicine, Hilary undertook a master’s in biomedical sciences and translational medicine, where she worked on collaborative project between The Walton Centre and University of Liverpool LiMRIC centre. This project looked at ways to screen for and detect Parkinson’s Disease earlier.  

Hilary continued: “One of my family members’ was diagnosed with Parkinsons Disease. I saw how the disease advanced, which spurred my interest in exploring what was happening biologically, so I could better understand why such symptoms were manifesting.” 

Following this, while in her first year of medicine at the University of Liverpool, an exciting research opportunity through the INSPIRE programme became available with one of The Walton Centre’s Movement Disorders and Parkinson’s Disease specialists, Consultant Neurologist Dr Antonella Macerollo. 

Hilary explained “I started the research project in 2019, and despite the Covid-19 pandemic, The Walton Centre supported me so I could complete the analytics safely at home. This experience led to my first ever publication!” 

Whilst subsequently completing several research projects, the opportunity to apply for The Walton Centre Studentship bursary became available, which Hilary won. The funding enabled her to develop as a researcher and to enhance her skillset further in preparation for a future career in clinical academia.  

Hilary continued: “I was awarded the bursary after an interview where I had to demonstrate my past, current and future commitments to my chosen research area. I used part of the money to attend and present a poster at my first in-person international conference in Copenhagen, which is something I would never have been able to do without The Walton Centre.” 

Whilst at the Trust, Hilary was also able to achieve several publications, including her first article and book chapter as first-author, whilst continuing her studies in medicine.  

Hilary said, “I have recently taken a year out due to having my son, however I have been supported throughout by The Walton Centre to participate in projects when I can. I really appreciate these opportunities, as it allows me to develop my skills further while, taking the year away from my studies. I hope to continue to integrate research alongside my clinical career and to one day pursue an academic clinical fellowship post.”

Read Hilary Shepherd, medical student, won The Walton Centre Bursary…