LOROS Internal Communications
Welcome
Welcome to your August issue of the Hospice Pin Board. We are a few days later this month because we wanted to be able to share the launch of our amazing Rocket Round Leicester art trail! Check out the video below – it’s out of this world! There is also a spotlight on the lovely Lymphoedema team, some poetry and some info on how you can help with COVID-19 vaccination research – something for everyone hopefully!
Please don’t forget that all staff news and information is also available via the Staff Internal Homepage, important information about COVID-19 and LOROS is here, and information about the future of the Hospice is here. These pages are updated daily and are packed with information. If you have a question, it’s likely to be answered by the information on these pages.
Hope you enjoy, Sophie
Rocket Round Leicester
Ladies and gentlemen, we have LIFT-OFF!
Buckle yourself in for a year-long, out of this world experience and lots of rocket/space related puns!
Last night we launched Rocket Round Leicester to an online audience of potential sponsors and invited VIPs. Although the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic meant we had to hold our event online, we think our star quality launch video more than made up for it!
We did our spectacular Hero Rockets, 'Stardust' and 'DeLorean' proud and we are over the moon to let you know that a number of Rocket sponsorships were snapped up!
We're also bursting to let everyone know that BID Leicester are on-board as our first Official Supporter.
BID Leicester works to transform the city centre, making it a better place to live, work, visit, study and do business. This is HUGE for Rocket Round Leicester as BID Leicester represents 714 businesses and organisations, with Curve, Highcross, Pick Everard, St Martins Square, De Montfort University, John Lewis and the City Council all sitting on its Board.
View the launch video and have a small glimpse of what's in store on our intergalactic adventure from now until Summer 2021...
There's so much that's going to happen over the coming year and we'd love you all to be a part it!
Yesterday we also launched the [Rocket Round Leicester website](https://rocketroundleicester.co.uk/ "Rocket Round Leicester"), so pop over and take a look.
We'd LOVE you to help us to spread the word and help it to really 'rocket'. Please like all of our Rocket Round Leicester social media channels and share posts so that more people can find out all about it:
Facebook @RocketRoundLeicester
Instagram @rocketroundleicester
I know we asked you to be very patient and not take or share any photos of our two Hero Rockets, thank you, but now please feel free! Please remember to tag your photos using #RocketRoundLeicester
Thank you!
LOROS is 35
As you will know, this September LOROS turns 35! We’ve seen a lot of changes since we welcomed our first patient back in 1985.
But more than anything LOROS is, and has always been, all about people – our patients, their families, our staff and volunteers.
Like lots of things, COVID-19 scuppered our original plans, but we will still we are planning a host of exciting events to mark our anniversary and to ensure we will be here for the next 35 years.
We’ll be revealing more in the coming weeks!
Help us make our 35th special
What we are looking for now are your memories, stories, anecdotes or thoughts on how the Hospice has changed over the years. If you have a memory you’d like to share, please email marketing@loros.co.uk or you can fill in the form here.
Good news
Peter’s poem
One of Dr Cassy Rowe-Haynes community patients, Peter Hydon, wrote a wonderful poem about the nurses following his recent stay in hospital and wanted to share it for all of our nurses too. Peter died last week aged 86 and had been making up and entertaining his wife, two daughters, five grandchildren and three great grandchildren with his poetry all their lives. Thank you Peter for sharing this with us.
NIGHT FEVER by Peter Hydon
A nurse came striding down the ward
In answer to my bell
She had so many things to do,
I knew so very well
She soothed my fears, settled me and brushed away my woes
Then tucked me up very tight and covered up my toes
She was so experienced and very, very wise
A sudden thought “Oh” could she be, an “Angel” in disguise?
Anna’s 700 mile run!
Anna Bithell, our Data Analyst, and nine members of her family are going the extra mile for their LOROS fundraiser. They are each running 70 miles (a total of 700 miles!) over four weeks, finishing on 7th August which would have been her stepdad’s 70th birthday. He was cared for by our wonderful CNS team before he died last September. You can donate here to support Anna and her family.
A walking commute
Perhaps not good news (?!) but an absolutely brilliant idea from Bruce, our Partnership Development Coordinator. When you are working from home, you don’t get those 15, 30 or 60 minutes alone in the car to wind down after your working day and before your evening begins at home. So when Bruce finishes, he heads out on a walk as his ‘commute’ and gives himself a chance to chill out before returning home to enjoy his evening. Such a great idea and, after trying it for a few days myself, something I highly recommend you trying!
Our ducklings visit the Ward
Our family of very inquisitive ducks took the opportunity to visit a few patients during the weather warm when the doors were open! It even made the news with lots of different media outlets covering it! Thanks to Marie Olivant for the getting such a cute video.
Grandma alert!!
A big congratulations to Lottery Promoter, Lindsey Geary, or should we say Nanna Geary, who welcomed her first grandchild into the world on 30th July, a little boy weighing 6lbs 2oz. No news on a name yet but Lindsey is over the moon.
Hellos and goodbyes
Welcome to our one new starter! If you fancy having a look at who they are then you can access staff profiles via Select HR.
Hellos
Corinne Farrow |
Registered Nurse - Green Team (Inpatient Ward Department) |
Goodbyes
Neil Wright |
Van Driver / Delivery Person |
Tina Gibbins |
Healthcare Assistant |
Lesley Heighton |
Lymphoedema Nurse |
Kathy Gibb |
Shop Manager |
Nathan Hiom |
Deputy Shop Manager |
We also said goodbye to 21 of our colleagues who chose to take VR last month. John Knight circulated an email on 14th July with a list of those whose VR had been confirmed.
LOROS Research
The Research team have been busy continuing with study follow-ups successfully and more recently, with protocol amendments allowing remote consent and study interviews to take place by phone or virtually, the team have been able to re-open recruitment of new participants to most of our studies.
Research Paper published in the BMC Palliative Care Journal
‘An exploration of the experiences of professionals supporting patients approaching the end of life in medicines management at home’. A qualitative study.
Professor Christina Faull, co-author and the Research team actively supported recruitment to the study at LOROS which aimed to explore how healthcare professionals describe the support they provide for patients to manage medications at home at end of life.
You can read the paper here.
COMMEND Study
A feasibility study and randomised controlled trial of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for people with motor neurone disease.
It is a randomised controlled study involving interviews and delivery of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to patients with MND.
The Research team are delighted that this study has been able to continue during the challenging times of COVID-19 with the support of Roy McPartland, Counsellor delivering the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy remotely.
For You – Wellbeing, HR and personal development
Mental Health First Aid Course
Our brilliant Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) course for staff is returning on Wednesday 7th and Friday 9th October (9am to 4.30pm, attendance is required on both days). This will be socially distanced but face to face training in LPDC.
The course aims to teach people how to identify, understand and help someone who may be experiencing a mental health issue. MHFA won’t teach you to be a therapist, but it will teach you to listen, reassure and respond, even in a crisis – and even potentially stop a crisis from happening.
You’ll learn to recognise warning signs of mental ill health, and develop the skills and confidence to approach and support someone while keeping yourself safe. You’ll also learn how to empower someone to access the support they might need for recovery or successful management of symptoms. This could include self-help books or websites, accessing therapy services through their GP, their school or place of work, online self-referral, support groups, and more. What’s more, you’ll gain an understanding of how to support positive wellbeing and tackle stigma in the world around you.
To find out more email Jo Elliot or the book via Eventbrite.
Blue Light Cards
There are some amazing offers available at the moment if you have a Blue Light card. The Blue Light Card is a discount card that can be used on online (and on the high street) for those in the Emergency Services, NHS and Armed Forces. There are some especially brilliant discounts at the moment so it is well worth it. To sign up you need to go the Blue Light website then in the sign up section select NHS. As part of the Employers Information section you will then be able to select Hospice (other).
LOROS Quiz – online now
Looking for a way to pass some time at home and support LOROS? We are delighted to bring you the latest edition of the LOROS quiz, which this time is themed around 'Flowers'.
This is the first edition of the quiz that can be entered either using the traditional paper quiz sheet OR our new online form which has been introduced. Both quizzes contain the same questions and are simply in different formats to ensure they can be accessed by a wide audience at this challenging time.
The Quiz is organised by LOROS' own quiz master, volunteer Jenny Burton. Jenny's first LOROS quiz was in autumn 2001, so it will soon be 20 years. She started doing an annual quiz and due to the popularity and fantastic response of our supporters we eventually persuaded her to do this twice a year. She has now raised a total of £75,784 for LOROS.
More information on how to play the quiz can be found here.
Health and wellbeing programme
We now have a full programme of health and wellbeing events, activities and groups for staff to access whilst working from home. This is updated weekly and is open to all staff, including those who have been furloughed. If you would like to see anything else included in the programme, please email Liz.
There is an extensive HR section on the Important Information section of the intranet and any additional queries should, in the first instance, be directed to your line manager.
Business Development
Not much to share this month, however, we are currently working up exciting plans to bring an outdoor cinema weekend to Leicester in September as part of our 35th Anniversary celebrations!
Keep an eye out more information in the Pin Board soon - we can't promise Danny Zuko will be there to serenade you though!
LOROS needs you
Always Remembered
Hopefully by now, you've seen this year's Always Remembered product, the beautiful LOROS Butterfly. Our fluttery friends have been flying out of the Hospice since the launch, with over 1,000 now sold!
If you'd like to purchase a limited edition Always Remembered Butterfly for yourself or a friend, there are available for just £25. A special order form for staff still working at the Hospice and able to collect has been created, and can be found here.
If you're not working at the Hospice and would like to purchase a Butterfly, please visit loros.co.uk/butterfly for a list of stockists or to order online.
Butterfly artists needed!
As part of our Always Remembered campaign this year, we're encouraging our supporters to go all-out Butterfly and download, print and get arty with our LOROS Butterfly colouring in.
We're looking to push this on social media next week, and could really do with some pictures of completed colouring to feature. Would you mind asking your children to have a go? It might even keep them occupied for half an hour or so!
You can download and print the Butterfly to colour in here.
We'd love you to send your photos of the beautiful finished item, or them doing the colouring in (if you're happy for their pics to be used on our social media) to marketing@loros.co.uk please.
We'd really appreciate your help, these will help us push sales over the coming weeks!
Lottery team
Like many other teams, we’re having to consider ‘what we do’ and ‘how we do it’. Our Lottery Fundraisers would usually be out in the community and at fundraising events, raising awareness of the LOROS Lottery, but unfortunately, this activity has been on hold now for over four months. We’re planning for their return, but we just don’t know what our new ‘normal’ will look like, taking into consideration community acceptance, shopper confidence and venue agreement. We enjoyed catching up with them all this morning…here they are at our Coffee Morning. You may just be able to make out Lindsey on the right, who is modelling her handmade LOROS face covering.
So what can we do right now? Utilise our social media platforms, come up with new ideas to capture the imagination of our potential supporters, and seek new opportunities. And that’s where you come in, our friends and colleagues.
If you play the LOROS Lottery, and have a story to tell, we’d love to hear from you. People can relate to real people and real stories, so we’d love to share your journey with our community. You may have a connection to LOROS, besides being an employee or volunteer, you may have sadly lost someone, which has influenced your career choice, or maybe you have a heart-warming story of somebody you’ve worked with or met at LOROS, who has inspired you. If you’ve been lucky enough to win, tell us about that, what made you sign up, how did winning feel, what did you spend your winnings on? Email Scarlett.
And finally, just a reminder….if you know of anybody who is getting married, we now stock a beautiful wedding favour scratch card. They can even be personalised with the names and wedding date for just £1 each. Plus Lottery E-Gifts are now available on line, if you’d like to treat a friend or loved one to a special little ‘pick me up’, from as little as £10.
Thank you for your ongoing support.
The Lottery team
COVID Corner
COVID-19 Vaccine Research Registry
Our Research team wanted to highlight the National Institute for Health Research’s COVID-19 Vaccine Research Registry is now open for people to sign up; this enables you to sign up to register their interest in taking part in vaccine trials into the virus.
The service is available to anyone aged 18 or over, living in the UK. To register, users need to fill in some personal and contact details, and answer a series of basic health screening questions on an NHS.UK website form. The service is highly secure, with personal data and permissions held in a NHS system managed by NHS Digital.
By registering through the service, users are not signing up to take part in a specific trial or study. Instead, researchers working on vaccine studies supported by the NIHR will be able to search for volunteers who have signed up to the service. Signing up is an individual choice.
You can sign up to the register here and can find out more information about the register here.
COVID-19 insurance scams on the rise
The Insurance Fraud Bureau (IFB) have reported a rise in insurance claims scams. Fraudsters are calling members of the public to make them aware they're entitled to compensation for any money they have lost due to COVID-19; they then offer to help process the compensation claims. Victims are asked to provide their personal and financial information, which the scammers then use to commit identity theft.
Remember:
· If contacted out of the blue, never provide personal or financial information.
· Report any suspicions of insurance fraud to the IFB's confidential Cheatline service.
· Take steps to protect personal data from being stolen to help to prevent being targeted. Guidance can be found here.
Team Spotlight
This month Margaret Benson, Manager of our Lymphoedema services, has seen through an update on her team and how they are still helping patients during these challenging times. The only photo we could find of the team was from Lymphoedema awareness week – hence the socks!
Although the outpatient area has been locked down for the past few months, the lymphoedema clinic has continued to run, albeit in a different way.
Some members of the team have spent time on the ward and/or have been furloughed and during this time Lesley Heighton has retired. We are very sorry not to have been able to celebrate her many years of nursing and the valuable contribution Lesley made to the Lymphoedema team. We will plan “a bit of a do” when the restrictions have lifted and we can all socialise freely.
Our referral rate dropped dramatically at the beginning of lockdown but is now slowly increasing. All cancer patients and their referrer are sent a letter acknowledging the referral and the patients are sent simple self - help advice until they can be offered an appointment. The referrers of non - cancer patients (mainly GPs) are sent comprehensive advice on how they can help and manage the patient.
Each day I work through the monthly list of patients who should be seen in clinic for a follow up appointment and contact them to offer a telephone follow up (approx. 70 per month). This is working well and patients have been very receptive to this idea. Many of our older patients are very glad to have the opportunity to talk to someone and calls can last from 10 minutes to an hour. I have made several new best friends!
I have seen a few patients in clinic face to face who had more urgent problems and continue to see patients on the ward when required.
Our patients and healthcare professionals continue to ring for general advice.
I have completed one virtual patient assessment that was a great success and hopefully we can build on this going forward. Video calling could become a very efficient way of dealing with patient problems and queries and also supporting healthcare professionals with patients we are unable to see.
Going forward, with the support of Liz and her team, we are hoping to develop resources for the LOROS website including short educational videos and information sheets. We are also keen to be part of the ECHO project.
Nothing beats face to face contact and the use of touch in caring for our patients, but the last few months have shown that new ways of working can be very beneficial and will definitely be a part of the Lymphoedema service going forward.
Heads of Department meeting – in brief
These are some useful and interesting bits taken from the HoDs meeting held on 21st July; it was a busy meeting with lots of other interesting discussions so I’d recommend looking through the full minutes that were circulated by Becca on 24th July.
IT Support
The team are continuing to support the organisation with Lisa and Martin covering the IT office between them on-site during core hours and Justin coming in 1-2 days per week as required.
Please be aware that Lisa is on leave from 23rd to 3rd August with Martin and Justin covering the IT service. Martin, and then Justin, will be on leave in August.
Mandatory training
Although it is not possible to attend any face to face training, please ensure you are keeping up to date with all mandatory training that is available online. Please contact the Education team if you have any queries.
Shops update from Gary
Initially 11 shops reopened, five then closed again due to local lockdown implemented late in the evening. As local lockdown eased five opened, a total of 11 of the 28 shops are now open. Footfall varying depending on area discussing a plan for re-opening of non-essential shops from 24th July. Number of days shops are opening varies depending the ability to staff the shops with no lone working. A plan to open all but four shops by mid-August has been developed.
Donations will be accepted from 29th July at the Glenfield Warehouse with safe storage of 72 hours reducing to 48 hours. Pullman Road planned to open week later.
A Tesco’s lorry used for additional storage space has been sourced thanks to Laura Betts
The four shops not planning to open include a furniture shop, Wigston town centre and Market Street. Unfilled vacancies have added to the challenges.
Staff Wellbeing
Breakout groups to discussed staff wellbeing for remote working and what the future of this might look like. What can LOROS do to make this as effective, comfortable and as supportive as possible? What are the changes HODs are seeing and what advice is being given on self-management techniques. For example, how to stop work, knowing when to go back to the family and how to divide their day up. Are we effective at the moment in giving staff self-moment hints and tips?
If you have any feedback on the about please send your thoughts through to askjohn@loros.co.uk.
The Hospice Pin Board deadlines
The newsletter will be released monthly as per the dates below. To make it as informative and useful as possible we need your stories, content and information share.
Please email anything you would like to go into the newsletter or come and speak to Sophie in the Marketing office (ext. 8472).
| Content Deadline | Release Date |
|---|---|
| Tuesday 1st September | Monday 7th September |
| Tuesday 29th September | Monday 5th October |
| Tuesday 27th October | Monday 2nd November |
| Tuesday 1st December | Monday 7th December |