This week I am covering for Jacqui as she is on annual leave, returning to work next week. I would like to take this opportunity to remind colleagues about the importance of taking your annual leave to support your wellbeing. Taking time off is crucial to rest and recover, and of course to ensure you do all the things that are important to you outside of work.

As you will be aware, the junior doctors industrial action is currently underway across the NHS. I wanted to personally share my support for our junior doctor colleagues and their right to take action over the pay dispute. I would also like to share my gratitude to colleagues who are supporting our patients and helping us to ensure we are delivering safe care while our junior doctor workforce is reduced.

On 11 March we marked three years since we began our weekly All Staff Webinars, which we started as a response to COVID-19 in March 2020 to ensure colleagues across the Trust could stay up to date with the latest information at a time when everything was changing very quickly. I am pleased we still run the webinars every Wednesday from 12-1pm as, every week, we are still joined by hundreds of staff as the webinars are a great chance for you to hear what’s going on in the Trust and ask questions to our executive leadership team. In fact, three years later we’ve held almost 10,000 minutes of the All Staff Webinar with hundreds of speakers and thousands of questions.

I am really looking forward to our Make a Difference Annual Awards ceremony taking place next week. It is an opportunity to celebrate all of our amazing colleagues who have received Make a Difference awards over the last year and as this will be an in-person event, it will also be a chance to socialise with some of our colleagues we haven’t seen for a while. There is also an opportunity to watch the awards ceremony online for those who don’t want to party the night away.

Caroline