60 seconds with… Fidelia and Tejal
As we recently marked one year since we opened our first vaccination hub at Excel London, we talked to Fidelia Essell-Uwagbae (head of nursing for our vaccination programme) and Tejal Patel (head of pharmacy for the programme) about what this means to them, the positive stories, the challenges and what’s next.
It’s been a year since we opened our first vaccination hub at Excel, how do you feel about this?
Fidelia: It’s surreal, it’s difficult to comprehend that it’s actually been a year since the vaccination centre has been up and running.
There’s been so much work going on behind the scenes from the very beginning, from our initial planning meetings to when we actually hit the ground on the 11th January.
How’s your experience so far with this programme and are there any hidden heroes that you’d like to shout out about?
Fidelia: It’s been a really enjoyable experience, the team spirit is massive and it really represents Barts Health values.
The biggest shout outs for me would go to Jan Flint, Chris Gordon and Fiona Ashworth. All of them have always been hands on ensuring that things are flowing the way they should. They’ve come across a few challenges but they’ve been able to sort them out.
There are some other staff members who have been with us since day one, one of them is Haroun Kamara who we have now succeeded in recruiting as a matron and it’s our biggest good news story. He came to us as a band 5 agency nurse and he’s been working with us throughout this time, he interviewed for the role of a matron and was successful.
We also have someone in the background who has spearheaded every single clinical decision that was made and that’s Tejal, our head pharmacist. She’s been the bedrock of every single vaccination transport, knowledge that we have, without her and the way she works, the high reputation of the vaccination programme wouldn’t be what it is without her.
Tejal: We have received comments in our service user feedback forms about us been the best vaccination centre in terms of quality and friendly service. When people come to us to volunteer, they are really keen to because our education team is unique and they feel very confident of the skills they gain with us when being trained to vaccinate people.
What are some of the positive stories that you’ve had so far?
Tejal: One of the top things from me is the outreach programme. We were running one of the biggest vaccination centres in Excel, however we were able to take the vaccines less privileged members of the public, who are undocumented or who didn’t have the means to come to get their vaccine.
We’ve had a lot of great achievements in supporting people who were vaccine hesitant. It’s always been about conversations - we’ve had the opportunity to speak to people about why they haven’t had the Covid-19 jab. Offering people the opportunity to talk to us when they have some doubtful thoughts in their mind has really been a small act resulting in big benefits in terms of supporting people to get vaccinated.
Fidelia: One of the proudest moments for me is the fact that we started the outreach in the community and that we were nominated last year for the HSJ partnership award in the Health and Local Government Partnership category. We were runner ups and we didn’t win but the fact that we got to the final stage is quite remarkable.
Through our outreach programme, we’ve also been able to get some network and get support from faith leaders in the community. Building relationships with these individuals has been instrumental in making progress with different cultural and religious communities.
What are some of the challenges that you have been facing?
Fidelia: One challenge has been around staffing, creating the continuity for staff working with us as we vaccinate members of the public and staff.
Because we are a programme, we have fixed term contracts so the challenge for us is keeping our best staff but we are currently working with the People’s team to make sure that people that come and join us, stay with us for much longer.
Can you tell us about your work with the local community and what are you working on at the moment?
Tejal: We are working on having a improving engagement with our communities, we’ve made good progress so far but we’d like to improve this. At the moment what we do is to bring the vaccine to the communities, you tell us where to go and we bring the people to help vaccinate, but we know that we are still working on tagging this work in collaboration with the community leaders, we want to work in collaboration with the communities not in isolation.
We are currently working closely with five different boroughs in London designing ways of reaching out to the hesitant groups. This time our focus is very much on supporting people who are hesitant to make an informed choice.
Any particular highlights in your work with the community that you’d like to share?
Tejal: I remember one time when we were at a homeless shelter and we had a person who took some time to get their jab but a few days later he came back and also brought in a few friends along to get their jab.
Sometimes it is about building trust and confidence. Our team are very well equipped and skilled to provide this kind of support. It’s not all about jabbing, it’s also about what else we can do for people and about providing everyone with a positive patient experience.
Haven’t had one of your Covid-19 jabs?
Visit the Whipps Cross vaccination hub and get your jab today. The centre is located at junction 13 and it’s open every day from 8:30am to 7:00pm. You can simply walk in or book your appointment via the national booking system.
Our teams are also available to chat if you have any questions or concerns.