Nursing (RCN) President visits Pennine Acute Trust Hospitals

The Royal College of Nursing President, Andrea Spyropoulos, has paid a special visit to The Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust recently, at the invitation of local RCN union representatives.

Accompanied by local RCN officer, Janine Dyson, Mrs Spyropoulos spent a day travelling around the Trust’s four hospitals last month to listen and speak with frontline nurses.

Mrs Spyropoulos met staff and patients as she visited a number of wards. These included the Stroke Unit at Fairfield General Hospital, the new Urgent Care Centre (UCC) at Rochdale Infirmary, the discharge lounge and F11 ward (clinical haematology) at The Royal Oldham Hospital and the A&E department at North Manchester General Hospital.

At the same time, she also took the opportunity to meet with the Trust’s senior nursing team, led by the Trust’s Director of Nursing, Marian Carroll. They discussed recent development and service changes that had taken place across the Trust, and some of the challenges currently facing both the Trust and the nursing profession.

When Pennine Acute Trust revealed that it had to save £45m earlier in the year, the RCN locally opposed cuts to the frontline. Unions, including the RCN, are now working closely with the Trust to look at innovative ways to delivery high standards of care and cut waste.

Transforming for Excellence (TfE) is the Trust’s quality improvement and efficiency programme to maintain services through this economic downturn and achieve the necessary cost efficiency savings required. TfE has helped the Trust make huge savings, enabling the Trust’s income and expenditure to balance last year. The target is to achieve £45 million cost improvements this financial year (2011/12). To date, around £41m of approved cost saving schemes have been identified.

After the visit Mrs Spyropoulos, President of The Royal College of Nursing, commended the Trust’s nurses. She said: "I had the opportunity to meet some ordinary nurses delivering exceptional care in extremely challenging circumstances. The nurses were dedicated, kind, caring and extremely professional."

Marian Carroll, Director of Nursing, said: “We welcomed the opportunity for the RCN President to meet a number of our staff and to see the excellent work which is taking place at the Trust. I would like to personally thank our local RCN reps for inviting her. The visit demonstrated that partnership working is the way forward.”