On the Move

Hayley is a health care assistant on Waverly ward at Bridgwater Community Hospital and in 2024, she brought her idea of a Dementia Café to life, creating a warm, welcoming space for patients, carers, and colleagues to connect beyond the clinical setting. Lizzie House, district nurse transformation lead, chats to Hayley about the café and how it helps her patients for Alzheimers Awareness Month. As always, our podcast begins with a snippet from Team Brief to keep you up to date.

Listen to our March podcast, with a snippet from our trust Team Brief until 4:00, and then Lizzie House, district nursing service transformation and development lead, interviews Katharine and Georgina on their role, teamwork and what goes bump in the night.  Our Somerset NHS Foundation Trust on the move podcast offers an insight into our colleagues and their roles, released monthly.

This episode's guest is Tim Horlock, GP Partner at East Quay Medical Centre and current chairman of the Local Medical Committee (LMC), who breaks down how primary care works in practice for our colleagues in the trust with Andrea Trill, our medical director for integrated and primary care at Somerset FT and a GP by background. Take 20 minutes today while you are commuting or doing your admin to hear what it means to be a GP partner, how primary care networks and Symphony Healthcare fits into the picture, how different colleagues in help to manage their patient list, and what a typical day looks like in a GP practice – from the clinical side with home visits and diagnosing patients, to the admin and how funding works to keep the whole system turning.

This episode's guest is Libby Boorman, learning disabilities nurse in our community team for adults with learning disabilities, who talks about the STOMP programme with Andrea Trill, our medical director for integrated and primary care at Somerset FT and a GP by background, who uses her experience to ask the questions a GP would want to know.

The peri-operative service helps patients from the moment surgery is contemplated, through the surgery and recovery, optimising health and wellbeing for patients scheduled for major elective surgery. Their aim is to identify patients as early as possible to support them to be as well as possible before their surgery date and reduce cancellations and re-admissions. Jacqui Wilson, senior operation manager for peri-operative services, Louise Lewis, lead nurse for peri-op, and Tom Teare, consultant anaesthetist and clinical lead for peri-operative medicine for the trust, have a discussion with Andrea Trill about their service. Andrea is our  medical director for integrated and primary care at Somerset FT and a GP by background, and uses her experience to drill down into what a GP wants to know.

Johnny Scott, children and young people participation worker joins us for the second episode of our newest podcast 'On the Move', which lets you catch up on a snippit of the latest team brief before Lizzie House, district nurse transformation lead, interviews Johnny about his 'finding solutions group' and the benefits of patient / service user feedback in continuous improvement of our services in Somerset. Johnny explains "Without listening, we don't know what we don't know. And who better to tell us than the people using the service?" Take 15 minutes today on the move, commuting to your next patient or completing your admin, and hear more.

19 - 25 May is Dementia Action Week, so Andrea is joined by Helen Andrew, operational service manager for the central dementia service for Somerset FT and Cindy Firs, head of partnership at SPARK Somerset, overseeing the dementia partnership.  The team explains how the dementia service works, talking through the assessment, diagnosis and post diagnostic support visit, and what support is available through the Alziemers Society with voluntary organisations like memory cafe's, carers support, support groups for patients in the patient's local area.

On connecting the dots this month, Andrea, medical director for integrated and primary care at Somerset FT and a GP by background, is joined by Ali VanLaar, associate director of mental health and learning disability care, and Emma Lawton, liberty protection safeguards/mental capacity act lead (nmc), talking about the 'people who matter to patients project'. The project focuses on improving information between a patient's healthcare professionals and the people that matter to them, such as family, friends and loved ones. "People will keep trying to say the same thing, and feel anxious, unless they really feel like they have been heard..."

Marc McDonagh, Head of Psychological Professions, talks about the benefits psychological professions bring across the wide range of services Somerset Foundation Trust offers with our host Dr Andrea Trill, medical director, integrated and primary care. With around 200 - 300 colleagues, we have paediatric psychologists, neuropsychologists working in stroke services and psychological wellbeing practitioners in talking therapies to name a few.

Dr Andrea Trill, our medical director for integrated and primary care, along with special guest Dr Jon Upton – a GP at St James Medical Centre, in Taunton and a GPwER (GP with extended responsibility) in dermatology and dermatology lead at the Integrated Care Board. This very first podcast explores the development of our new dermatology service in Somerset, and we hope we've managed to answer some of the questions that our primary and secondary care colleagues may have.

Tom Lister, Lead Healthcare Scientist at Somerset NHS Foundation Trust, talks about healthcare scientists, of which the trust has over 200.  Scientists across the NHS are responsible for around 80% of diagnoses'. In our trust you can find specialists in cardiology, audiology, respiratory, radiotherapy, medical electronics, data science and more.

This podcast series aims to connect healthcare colleagues and share useful information in Somerset. The idea is that it will help primary care and secondary care teams (acute, community and mental health) to work well together for the benefit of our population. Have a listen in to this episode, where Mary Trotman, childrens community nurse at Somerset FT, shares information and support available to children in Somerset with neurodevelopmental disorders. Find out who is best placed to make a referral (not necessarily the GP), how to make a referral and why a diagnosis is not necessary for accessing support. Hosted by Andrea Trill, medical director for integrated and primary care at Somerset FT and a GP by background.  

In this episode, Andrea, medical director for integrated and primary care at Somerset FT and a GP by background, is joined by Andrew Prouse, director of pharmacy at Somerset FT, including our sites such as Musgrove Park Hospital, Yeovil District Hospital, mental health, community hospitals and community services. He talks about how medicines are prescribed in hospital, including the differences between each site and challenges they face working across different systems, teams and locations, and the work they have been doing to improve, including plans for 2025. Recorded in November 2024. These episodes aim to share information between primary and secondary care in a new easy to listen to format and spread knowledge.

Yvonne Smith, one of our mental health nurses in the home treatment team, has shared with us her inspirational story. She talks about her love of her job today, and her journey from it's beginning in 2019 as a patient in that very same service. Yvonne was a finalist in the 'National Lived Experience Awards' in September, for the category of 'Hope and Positivity'! She won the 'service user choice vote' for her category. Hayley Peter's, our chief nurse, said in her supporting statement for the Lived experience awards that "What I'd want people to know is, that it is a really inclusive organisation, we welcome patients with lived experience, whether that be their own experience of being a patient in our mental health settings or it might be that you've got a disability or something else that you've experienced that makes you a more empathetic practitioner or clinician. Yvonne is testament to the contribution you can bring with that lived experience. "Hearing when she got her pin (as a registered nurse) and knowing what that meant to her, makes me really, really, sing with pride because you can't underestimate what that wonderful human being has had to overcome to achieve that. "Healthcare careers are for everybody, and if you bring something special with you, I would just say - don't be afraid to bring it to work. It will help you, it will help others, and don't see that as barrier or a problem."