MP’s 110th news bulletin.

 

Monday 6, February 2012

Welcome ...

Welcome to this my 110th news bulletin.

I spent the 26th and 27th of January working in Leighton Hospital to experience the day-to-day work of employees at all levels. I will be back at the hospital for my final two days at the end of this week but you can read about my first two days below.

DAY ONE

“SIGN here”. Hospitals rightly take security extremely seriously and it’s no surprise that my first port of call was to the identity suite to sign in, have my photo taken and be issued with my badge.

A visit to the security control room revealed a Star Trek-like bank of screens showing footage from cameras covering every public area on the hospital estate.

Whether it’s your home or a hospital, the chores that are vital cogs in the wheel are pretty similar – namely cooking, cleaning, washing and ironing. The difference is the scale. As I stand folding blankets with some of the 51 laundry staff, I am struck by the size of the operation.

What started out in the seventies as a glorified laundromat is now an industrial production line that sees 135,000 items laundered every week, weighing in at 1,100 kg per hour. It is soon apparent that my folding rate won’t be sufficient to keep up with demand, so I am politely re-deployed to the catering department to help prepare lunch for patients.

Leighton is the exception to the usual hospital catering rule in that it produces all its food in -house, and wherever possible uses local produce to do so. The kitchen has to rustle up two hot meals a day for around 450 patients, together with enough grub to feed about 700 of the 3,500 staff on duty at any one time. That’s an awful lot of Cheshire potatoes!

I get to help out on ‘the belt’, literally a conveyor belt with plates moving along to which certain food items are added as individually requested by each patient.

I take over the serving of the sweetcorn and Brussels sprouts, as Vicky, one of the hardworking kitchen team, patiently reads out to me what to put on each plate. I have to concentrate hard to make sure bed six in ward seven doesn’t get the sprouts they never ordered! The whole operation has to be complete within the hour to ensure every patient has their lunch on time.

I then accompany the head of catering as we transport the meals to the wards. It’s fair to say that the patients I hand over their lunch to are both grateful and complimentary about the fayre on offer. Hospital food doesn’t have the greatest of reputations, but for just under £3 a day per patient, the consensus amongst those I spoke to was that it stood up pretty well.

After sampling some soup and salad (and a dollop of crumble with custard) in the restaurant, I go off to join the porters starting their afternoon shift. To understand what porters do, if you can think of anything that needs moving from one part of the hospital to another – notes, samples, equipment, beds, patients and so on – porters do it all.

I stand with them at the main reception waiting for a job to come in, and before I know it I’m off to collect a patient from ward four and take her in a wheelchair to have some tests done about 250 yards down the corridor. Back at the front desk another patient needs moving from A&E, some samples need delivering to a consultant and a constant movement of medical notes fills the gaps. One porter told me he often covered 17 miles in a day.

Last on my list of crucial hospital activities was a spot of cleaning. Keeping a hospital clean is a non-stop operation, and their efforts have been rewarded with no MRSA cases for nearly two years, as well a 25% reduction CDiff in 2011.

They all clearly took great pride in their work. I witnessed a disinfection of a ward side room by a member of the deep cleanse team that literally left not a single square inch of the space untouched. Its no wonder that they get through literally thousands of mop heads a week.

Day one was an education in the work of the unsung heroes of our NHS. Day 2 will have a more clinical focus.

DAY TWO

WHEN we think of hospitals we tend to think of Accident and Emergency. Resplendent in my standard issue blue tunic and badge, I head down to meet up with the A&E team who have gallantly allowed me to join them.

On the way a visitor wanting directions to X-ray stops me. It’s easy to forget I look to them like a fully fledged member of staff. Luckily I am saved by a passing porter whose encyclopaedic knowledge of the hospital is all too apparent as he directs the visitor to his destination.

It’s a busy morning in A&E. In fact this has been one of the busiest winters staff can remember. I soon learn to expect anything and everything to be thrown at you. A man with a nasty head wound has just been admitted that requires an urgent scan. He can’t remember how it happened.

I help trolley him down to the MRI scanning room, itself snowed under with a steady stream of patients. I then go and see a local farmer who has suffered a big break to his ankle and needs to be taken to the plaster room.

An elderly gentleman is then brought in by the North West Ambulance Service crew with a suspected heart attack. Again scans are required.

It is a sobering experience, tempered only by the dedication displayed by the staff in giving each patient the best possible diagnosis and treatment they can.

My time in A&E is paused for a trip to witness the bed planning meeting. With their unofficial motto being ‘right patient, right bed, right time’, the bed planners are responsible for ensuring that all the medical and surgical admissions and discharges maximise the bed occupancy in the hospital.

A whiteboard up in their planning room looks like a complicated mathematical equation, and so it turns out to be.

I go on a ward walk with a member of the team to find out from staff nurses which of the 150 beds for medicine and surgery admissions are likely to come free by the end of the day, and which patient will be filling them.

The daily prediction by staff of numbers in and numbers out is usually not far off, and today is a good day, freeing some much needed space for the weekend.

I know from my constituency casework that, although the majority of patients are satisfied by their experience at Leighton Hospital, that is not the case for everybody. That is why when I return in February I will be spending time with complaints and PALS (Patient Advisory Liaison Service) to understand better where people see room for improvement. But I left my first days at Leighton with two strong impressions.

The first was a great admiration for the staff I met across the length and breadth of the hospital trust, their determination to keep improving, and their love for what they do.

The second was an appreciation of the high levels of skill and professionalism contained on that one site and how in demand those skills are. It was both humbling and enlightening and I can’t wait to return.

Please remember, you can always contact me directly if you have any questions for me.

You can forward the bulletin on to your friends and family, who can sign up themselves by clicking here for my website.

Best wishes 

Edward Timpson
Member of Parliament for Crewe & Nantwich

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I have recently ...

• Held an advice surgery at King's Grove School. Thank you to Head teacher Mr Langston and all his staff for making us so welcome - a resounding success.
• Asked the Leader of the House of Commons for a debate on promoting local British produce, so that we can discuss how to stretch the consumer audience as far and as wide as possible. I raised the International Cheese Fair in Nantwich (the world’s largest cheese fair), which showcases outstanding local produce including the unbeatable Cheshire cheese, as an example. To read more click here or listen to my interview on BBC Radio Stoke here (at 1:49:15).
• Visited Brierley St Primary School to talk to pupils about democracy, national government and the Houses of Parliament. Given tour of the school by Head teacher Mrs Booth and Deputy Head Mrs McIntosh. Thank you to members of the School Council for their wide ranging and searching questions!
• Attended the Street Games reception in Parliament to hear more about their involvement in Cheshire East Street Sports and the Crewe YMCA.
• Chaired the Parliamentary Group on Looked-After Children and Care Leavers.
• Reopened Crewe Library following an extensive refurbishment
• Asked the Prisons Minister, in light  of the fact that more than half of male prisoners and almost three quarters of female prisoners have no qualifications at all, what efforts are being made, through the training of prison officers, to raise awareness of the importance and availability of prison education in our prisons? Read the Minister's answer here.
• Visited the Shavington Village Festival Committee's publicity stall in Crewe market  for their pantomime production of Red Riding Hood

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Westminster Report

Read my most recent Westminster Report

Click here or on the image

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Photos & Video ...

Edward Opening the new Orthopaedic Out-Patients and Fracture Clinic at Leighton Hospital

You can view all my photos and video at edwardtimpsonmp.com

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Community News

Support the Looking After the Homeless Group

The LATH Group (Looking After The Homeless) aims to ease the plight of the homeless in the Crewe area, with the long term aim of eliminating it altogether. The organisation is in dire need of donations, to help ease the lives of those that are homeless & many of whom are sleeping rough in these cold winter months.
To make a donation please click here - Please forward this link to your friends, your families & your colleagues, add the link to your Facebook & Twitter pages to help our cause and spread the word.
Your money will be used to feed, create warmth, clothe, and help shelter those who need it this winter.
Do you have community news to share? Email me and it could be here too!

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Leighton Hospital in Crewe unveils revamped orthopaedic unit

Crewe Chronicle

PATIENTS with broken bones will now have access to more efficient treatment thanks to a revamp at Leighton Hospital’s orthopaedic outpatients unit.

Improved facilities include an increased amount of privacy and dignity for patients, with eight individual consultation rooms replacing the original seven curtained cubicles.

The department, which incorporates the fracture clinic, now also has a specially designed plaster room, replacing the previous facility which was located in a portable cabin adjacent to the unit.

This new plaster room has facilities to allow for four patients to be seen simultaneously.

Matron Del Owen said: “The three-month refurbishment has created a much more efficient service and pleasant environment for patients, and has greatly improved the working conditions for our staff. The new reception and waiting area is light and airy, and also features a television for patients, courtesy of the hospital’s League of Friends charity organisation.”

Edward Timpson MP was also given a tour of the new facilities. He said: “I’ve been very impressed. The people of Crewe, Nantwich and the surrounding areas will be well served by having such a valuable clinic on their doorstep.”

“How much more of our money are they prepared to waste until the application finally fails?

“We will win this campaign,” said Mr Perris.

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Crewe and Nantwich MP Edward Timpson tells of his experience growing up with foster children

Crewe Chronicle

Crewe and Nantwich MP Edward Timpson grew up with foster children. He talked to reporter Belinda Ryan about his childhood and what he gained from the experience.

CREWE and Nantwich MP Edward Timpson can’t really remember a time growing up when his parents’ home wasn’t full of foster children.

Mr Timpson was only five when his mum and dad, John and Alex, began fostering.

During the 30 years they acted as foster carers, they looked after nearly 90 children.

Mr Timpson says it was this positive experience which motivated him into practising family law and taking on the position of chairman of the all-party group on fostering and adoption.

“One of the things that really motivated me to do what I’m doing now is to try to help those children who find themselves in care, through no fault of their own, to get a better life and have a better chance to make something of themselves,” said the Conservative MP.

With more than 60,000 children in care, thousands of carers are needed up and down the country.

More than 1,200 extra foster carers need to be found across the north west of England in the next 12 months, according to the Fostering Network.

Mr Timpson still bumps into people who were fostered by his parents.

During last year’s election campaign he told how he met a man at a public meeting who was about seven years younger than himself who was fostered by his parents.

“When you talk to them and find out what they’re doing now and what they’ve made of their lives, it really hits home what my parents did and how much it’s played a part in these peoples’ lives,” said Mr Timpson.

The Tory MP admits his initial reaction when he discovered his parents had started fostering wasn’t as charitable as it might have been.

“I was nearly six and I came skipping home from school one day to find these two fairly loud children, aged five and three, downstairs in the kitchen,” he said. “As the youngest of three I was used to having my mother’s undivided attention and on finding I was to have to share her my reaction was to run upstairs in a huff, run into my bedroom, slam the door and refuse to come out until they left.”

His reaction didn’t last long.

“As I grew older I started to take on more of a caring role myself, helping to do late-night bottles, that sort of thing, and I could start to see what my parents were doing it for and it was quite rewarding,” he said.

“You could see the change in many of these children. They started to thrive under routine, their personalities came out and the resentment I had at the start just evaporated.”

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5 ways to contact Edward Timpson

• By email: timpsone@parliament.uk
• On the web: edwardtimpsonmp.com
• By phone: 01270 501 725
• By post: 30 Victoria Street, Crewe CW1 2JE
• In person: Click here to see surgery times

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