The MET Office has issued a yellow warning, predicting snow and ice across large parts of Derbyshire and the north of the country from 7pm tonight.

This will inevitably cause some disruption to travel and public transport.

As always in the event of any disruption to services, we must prioritise our most vulnerable/urgent patients and ensure the safety of all staff. Below is a list of pre-emptive advice:  

• Only travel if it is safe to do so and continue to watch weather and snow updates. It's always sensible to plan for the worst and avoid areas known to be higher risk
• Use the Met Office’s Find a Forecast function on its website for your area and/or an area you are due to travel into
• Sign-up to the one.network map, a reliable source of information about all UK traffic disruption
• Any issues on the roads can be reported to the county council online
• Look out for vulnerable neighbours, especially if they have care services who may not be able to reach them
• For the latest information follow your councils, NHS and emergency services on social media, listen to local radio and visit Derbyshire County Council snow updates
• In exceptional circumstances, we may be able to arrange access to 4x4 vehicles. This could be if you have a particularly vulnerable patient in an area impacted by the snow. Before raising a request, you should discuss the circumstances with your line manager. If the line manager supports the request, then you should contact the clinical navigation team on 01246 252954 between 9am and 5pm (seven days per week). Outside these hours any requests should be made via 01332 623700 - just ask for the DCHS on-call manager. 

Here are some further helpful tips from the Met Office: 

• Travelling in snow and ice
• Driving safely in winter weather.

Progress on Belper’s new health centre development: Demolition of the old Belper Clinic has been completed as contractors clear the site ready for construction of a brand new £15m community health services facility. Plans for the development were approved by Amber Valley Borough Council in September 2023 and have been designed to be in keeping with the heritage of the local area, read more here.

NHS Staff Survey: This year's NHS Staff Survey will close on Friday 29 November. Thank you to everyone who has already taken the time to complete this year's survey. Our response rate is currently at 59% and our flexible workforce response rate of 31% is currently the best of all community Trusts. If you haven't yet completed the survey, please remember you have the protected time to have your say. Here in DCHS, we champion the NHS People Promise - we each have a voice that counts.

Become a DCHS digital champion: Thank you to everybody who completed the digital confidence staff survey earlier this year. You can see the results in this infographic. We've implemented the DCHS digital champions network to help support our workforce to increase their digital confidence. For more information, please see here or watch our FAQ video. To become a digital champion, please email: rachel.wilkinson-potter@nhs.net.

Derbyshire Shared Care Record enhancing patient care: The use of the Derbyshire Shared Care Record (DSCR) is growing every week. Last week, it helped improve care for 3,215 patients by allowing health and social care professionals to share important information. The DSCR gives you a complete view of a person's health and social care records in a secure and confidential way, with access based on your role. If you have questions or need access, contact: crhft.dscradmin@nhs.net. For more details, visit the DSCR page on the Joined Up Care Derbyshire website.

Where's The Teaspoon - latest episode out now: In this month’s episode of our podcast, Where’s The Teaspoon, we're on the road with executive PA, Melanie Dakin, as she shares her experience of an extended road trip around Europe in a campervan (with her pet dog and partner in tow!). Listen on Spotify or YouTube (with subtitles).

Flu and Covid-19 vaccinations – how to get yours: There are three ways to get your flu vaccination this year. You can pre-book or just drop-in to a DCHS or DHCFT site, all the booking details can be found here or you can view our list of available flu vaccination clinics for this week here. If you can’t make it to one of our sites, you can also get your flu vaccination through your GP or at a pharmacy. Any questions, please email the team at dchst.flu@nhs.net and they'll be in touch to assist you. As healthcare workers, we're all eligible for this year’s Covid-19 vaccination as well. You can book your winter Covid-19 vaccination online, via the NHS app or at a clinic here.

Design a flu sticker competition: Last week we launched our competition to design next year’s flu sticker. If you work for #TeamDCHS and you or your family are budding artists, why not get involved? The winner will see their design made into reality for next year’s campaign and win a festive hamper. You can draw your entry on an A4 sheet of paper, but please be mindful that when printed the flu stickers are usually around 30mm so any text or image will be scaled down to size. Email your entries to dchst.flu@nhs.net before Monday 2 December!

International Fraud Awareness Week: As the NHS prepares to support International Fraud Awareness Week (Sunday 17 - Saturday 23 November), it is important that we are all aware of the threat of fraud against the NHS, how we can work together to spot it, report it and ultimately stop it. This campaign is dedicated to raising awareness about fraud, its impact on organisations and society, and promoting counter-fraud practices and education. Read more details here. If you need to report any suspicions of fraudulent behaviour, please contact Matt Treharne-Clarke.

Congratulations to our latest ROSE and IRIS award winners: This month’s ROSE award winner is Deanna Pereira-Wrafter from the Dementia Palliative Care Team. Her winning nomination said: “Deanna was so caring and compassionate towards my mum and was a real advocate for her on the ward, always having her health and wellbeing at heart. We cannot thank Deanna enough for her support and kindness, her role has made a huge difference to us at an incredibly difficult time.” You can find the full winning nomination here.

This month’s IRIS winner is a joint nomination for Mick Smith and Jeff Shelley from our Estates Team. Mick and Jeff went above and beyond to support a young child whose father is in end-of-life care. They assembled a safe, child-friendly kit bag personalised with her name, allowing her to feel involved in her father’s care. Their kindness provided comfort to the family during a challenging time. The nomination said: “We were over the moon with the response from the team who were extremely generous and efficient in popping everything together for us. We can't thank them enough. Who knows, we may have inspired a future nurse.” You can read the full nomination here.

Well done to all of this month’s winners!

Information Governance working from home questionnaire: Please tell us your experience of working with NHS information from home. We’d loved as many of you as possible to complete the questionnaire so that we can understand where staff may need information governance support/guidance. Please be completely honest with your answers (even if your answers are not in line with Trust policies). All responses are anonymous. Outcomes of the questionnaire will be shared through Trust communications. If you have any queries or require support with the questionnaire please email the Information Governance team at dchst.info.gov@nhs.net.

Home and remote workers questionnaire from Lucy Bastock: We are approaching the five years mark since Covid measures introduced significant changes in our working life, seeing many of us shift from a daily commute to sitting in a room on our own interacting via Teams. Lucy's personal experiences and observation of changes in the types of topics leaders are dealing with, got her thinking that she’d be really interested in learning more.

Initially the results will provide details for a project as part of a leadership development course Lucy is studying. Nothing like this seems to have been studied before, especially in the NHS, so it could become a really strong foundation for other work across the Trust and potentially wider. So, if you’d like to share your story and observations, please take part in this survey and be part of the change in understanding what is different, and share your ideas around what could help build a better work-place future for us all. It is open to anyone working from home or remotely (regardless of supervision or management responsibilities).

Responses are anonymous. If you have any queries or require support with the questionnaire, please email lucy.bastock@nhs.net.

Lunchtime Christian Network - Tuesday 26 November, 12.30pm - 1pm: Please feel free to join the Derbyshire NHS Christian Network for reflection. It is informal and we welcome anyone. Please join using this link, or contact dhcft.christiannetwork@nhs.net for more information.

We would like to say a huge thank you to all staff that have been able to take part in the Pain at Work study (multicentre pragmatic cluster randomised controlled feasibility trial to assess potential effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of the Pain at Work (PAW) toolkit in employees with chronic or persistent pain). Overall the study recruited 381 participants and 24 of those have been DCHS staff. The study is now closed to new recruits, so if you see a poster in your staff rooms please can we ask that you remove this. Thank you again for all your ongoing support with research within DCHS. If you would like to find out more about the research we are currently taking part in, please visit our Research and Innovation webpage or email the team.

Warp-It reuse management system: Warp-It makes it very easy for services in DCHS to get surplus items from, or give them to, other services. There are currently many items available for staff to claim and new items are added frequently. Take a look on MyDCHS for a list of items that are active currently and available to be claimed now. Visit the Warp-It homepage to log in or register.