Suzanne Rankin, Chief Executive at Ashford and St Peter’s Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Over one year on from the very first lock-down of this pandemic, there is some good news. As the number of daily infections in the UK continues to decline, we have started to take the first steps out of the third lockdown of the Covid-19 pandemic.
On March 23rd 2020, we were told we must stay at home to reduce transmission of Covid-19 as the cases of both in the community and the hospitals continued to rise. In response to this, like many, we had to change our ways of working and the ways we delivered care in order to keep our patients, local community and staff safe.
In the past year, we have utilised technology in new ways to enable us to provide video and telephone appointments, in addition to face-to-face where necessary, so that we could con-tinue to offer treatment to those in need. We’ve also recently introduced digital check-points for both patients and staff entering our Ashford and St Peter’s sites which are able to detect the use of face masks and check the temperature of those entering the hospitals, to allow staff who previously manned these to be able to return to providing care for patients.
We worked closely with and received a great deal of support from our local independent partners, BMI Runnymede and Nuffield Health Hospital Woking, which has allowed us to continue providing elective procedures for patients at their sites.
Although this has been a challenging time, there are a number of achievements to cele-brate at the Trust, such as treating and dis-charging over 1,600 patients with Covid-19 and giving over 10,000 vaccinations to health and social care workers across Surrey.
The efforts of members of our team have been recognised also nationally with numerous awards, including the Queen’s New Year’s and Birthday Honours Lists for their services to the NHS, as well as in the Parliamentary Awards. We were also held our very first ASPH New Year’s Honours List to recognise some of our colleagues internally who have truly gone above and beyond in their selfless support for patients and colleagues, with a socially distanced ceremony.
I’d like to extend a huge thank to our local community for the tremendous amount sup-port we have received throughout the past 12 months, through donations from the public and groups such as Nourish Our Nurses and Help Your NHS, and also Clap for Carers early on in the pandemic. Some of you may remember that very special evening at the start of April where we were joined by some of our local emergency services partners for a very special #ClapforCarers in the A&E car park at St Peter’s, who simultaneously flashed their blue lights in a coordinated display to demonstrate the country’s unified approach to tackling the covid-19 pandemic.
As we progress through the roadmap outlined by the Prime Minister over the coming months, please continue to follow the necessary restrictions in order to reduce transmission of Covid-19 and to keep each other safe.