Judy Dyos, Chief Nursing Officer, Goes Back to the Floor

Each of our seven Directors is spending time shadowing staff in services across the hospital as part of their ‘Executive back to the floor’ sessions. They're also blogging about their visits. This blog is from Judy Dyos, our Chief Nursing Officer, who visited colleagues in our Security Team.  

I recently spent the afternoon shadowing Jasmine, a member of the Facilities Team, who also works as a security guard. Jasmine was a fantastic example of a flexible and positive team member. She greeted me with a big smile and made me feel very welcome. She showed me breadth of work she covers and some of the unexpected things security staff have to do. The Security Team is made up of substantive staff and staff from an agency, who all work closely to ensure the safety of patients and staff across the site. On the day I worked there two security staff covered the whole hospital and there were some who were providing additional support for patients on wards.

I was impressed with the compassion from the staff supporting a patient who had episodes of aggressive behaviour due to mental health issues. The security staff worked with the ward team to use strategies to de-escalate the situation if the lady started to show signs of distress. There were no judgments, just discussion on how to help her to feel safe and cared for. We then transitioned to updating some of the 800 Salto locks that needed new batteries and updates. I had no idea that these locks needed this updating - I just tap my card without a thought about the maintenance schedule required.

I asked the team what they find most challenging and they said it was when they were asked to cover 1 to 1 support for the wrong reasons such as staffing challenges rather than a security requirement as they are a limited resource. We recently have been discussing how we can ensure we reach out to the security team for the right reason and how both the nursing staff and security staff understood the pressure we all face with the current demands on staffing and capacity across the organisation.

I want to say a big thanks you to Ben and Jasmine for sharing their day with me, it was really insightful.

02 March 2022