Here - Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust

Interview
regard to challenges I don’t see the
geography as such a problem as the
clinicians on the ground, because I have
worked in a multinational organisation
with places in different countries and
actually this Trust is not that big in the
terms of geographical spread, although
admittedly it is not like a hospital in that
we are not all on one site. For the
clinicians on the ground I think it is about
really working at our IT infrastructure
better and realising that we do not all
have to be in one place. If you can get
the IT infrastructure connected then the
organisation will feel more connected in
a different way, rather than in the
traditional way of all being in one
hospital. The IT strategy includes a
Blackberry pilot which is now beginning
to take off and one very basic, simple
thing that Mandy Stevens, Director of
Quality Performance, has (she comes
from the Priory, which has sites across the
country) is doing telephone
conferencing”.
Q. I suppose the other issue is having
sufficient funding and resources there
for rolling out the Blackberries, and
other more financially draining
aspects of communications?
“They are actually reasonably easy to
deliver; we just need to make sure we are
managing it at a decent pace, because
we do have a lot of people (not least
myself) who are not over confident with
technology!”
Q. That leads on to discussing money
and other opportunities. If money
was no object, as a hypothetical
question, what other services would
you like to bring in?
“Well I would object to that question
because that is not the real world. I think
as an organisation we have to help
people understand that limited resources
and service development go hand in
hand. My particular interest is around
having a much greater focus on
wellbeing. I am very interested in the
nature of the Surrey population and why
Surrey has such a high usage of general
hospitals acute care, when it is technically
supposed to be one of the healthiest,
wealthiest counties in the nation. I think
we have some fantastic opportunities as
a Mental Health and Learning Disability
Trust to move away from looking at
individual specialties and to try to use the
expertise we have in our clinicians to start
answering those questions for a bigger
population. I think that getting people to
understand and think of the connection
between mental and physical health, in
the way Services are commissioned, is a
real challenge”.
Q. There have been some difficult
decisions recently that have had to be
made across the Trust regarding bed
closures and reconfiguration. Do you
think there are any particular lessons
that came out of that?
“I think one of the lessons is that there
has been no reduction in the number of
people that are being seen and the
reason we have been able to close beds is
because the system in the community is
up and running well. Admittedly there
has been some discontent around it, but
not as much as there may have been
elsewhere. The readiness of people to
work with it and try it out is a
phenomenal testimony to the sound
clinical practice and teamwork in those
systems. The best way to manage such
issues is to have a strong multidisciplinary
team locally, with strong confident
clinicians, who are able to work
collaboratively. My job is to make sure we
have the right people in the senior
leadership positions and the competence,
confidence and climate so that people
have the challenge and discussion before,
rather than after, the event”.
30 Surrey and Borders Online Journal www.sabp.nhs.uk/journal