Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust

Queen Alexandra Hospital started life more than a century ago as a military hospital. Today it is one of the largest, most modern hospitals on the south coast, with 1,200 beds housed in light, bright, infection resistant, en-suite wards.

With a turnover of £600m, we provide comprehensive secondary care and a number of specialist services to a local population of 675,000 people across South East Hampshire. We also offer some tertiary services to a wider catchment in excess of two million people. The Trust employs over 7300 staff and is the largest employer in Portsmouth.

Most services are provided at Queen Alexandra Hospital in Cosham. Included within the modern buildings are:  28 theatres - with four dedicated endoscopy theatres and committed funding for a further 2 theatres  Four state of the art linear accelerators  Two purpose built interventional radiology suites, two MRI scanners, four CT scanners and a PET scanner  State of the art pathology laboratory  Neonatal Unit, Level 3  Hyper Acute Stroke Unit supporting the third largest stroke service in the country.  Superb critical care facilities  Second generation surgical robots – we have one of the largest robotic surgical programmes in the UK.

We also offer a range of outpatient and diagnostic facilities closer to patients’ homes in community hospital sites and at local treatment centres throughout South East Hampshire:  St Mary’s - midwifery, dermatology and disablement services  Gosport War Memorial Hospital – a range of services including the Blake Maternity Unit, Minor Injuries Unit, rehabilitation services and diagnostics  Petersfield Community Hospital – we manage the Cedar Rehabilitation Ward and run the Grange Maternity Unit  Fareham Community Hospital – rehabilitation services and outpatient clinics  Havant Community Services – diagnostics and outpatient clinics

Our Emergency Department is one of the busiest in the country treating in excess of 125,000 patients each year. We also see over 625,000 outpatients and carry out over 61,000 elective procedures.

Our maternity services deliver around 5,300 babies per year, making it one of the largest maternity services on the South Coast.

We are also home to the Wessex Renal and Transplant Unit and hold prestigious Cancer Beacon Status for Head and Neck Cancer Services.

We have recently announced an agreement between the Isle of Wight NHS Trust (IWT) and our organisation to improve services for people living on the Isle of Wight. We have been supporting a range of services for people living on the island for many years, both on the Isle of Wight and in Portsmouth. This agreement allows us to strengthen our joint working in a planned way so that we can better manage demand for services at both Trusts in the future.

We have recently been invited to become a member of the University Hospital Association and are a major provider of undergraduate and postgraduate education, working with three universities (Southampton, Portsmouth and Bournemouth). Our hospital also hosts the largest of five Defence Medical Groups in England. Personnel from all three Armed Services are fully integrated within the Trust, working alongside their civilian counterparts, helping to treat and care for patients from the local and surrounding communities.

Recruiting and maintaining a high quality workforce is a major priority. This includes the workforce associated with the Defence Medical Group South. This has been essential to maintain safe services, with recruitment overseas playing its part. Investments have been made to increase staffing levels and we have had a significant focus on improving retention of staff. As a result we have seen our turnover rates reduce from 13.5% to 11.3% in 12 months and our nursing vacancy rate currently stands at 5.1% which is one of the lowest in the country. Increased non-elective activity has resulted in a further increase in nursing and medical staff working in the organisation, specifically within the Emergency Department and medical specialties.

The Trust has been highly successful in the apprenticeship scheme and has achieved national recognition for this. This is proving to be a great source for future recruitment and the vast majority of apprentices that have been trained have gone onto full time employment. This is an area of increasing focus as we aim to grow a local workforce for the future

Research and innovation thrives within the Trust which plays a key role in developing multi-disciplinary research and strengthening nursing research ambitions. There are 150 research staff across clinical specialties, increased participation in clinical trials and we receive £8 million in major grants for our research activity. The last twelve months have been a busy, exciting and creative time for research and innovation within the Trust, including winning a prestigious national award – Best NHS Organisation demonstrating clinical research impact. In 2018/19 our Research and Innovation Team recruited more than 11,700 participants to clinical trials – almost double the number recruited in 2017/18. This was largely due to the Vision D study, which involves using a smartphone app to measure blood pressure and heart rate. We are ranked second among all large acute Trusts in England for research recruitment, and the top acute Trust in the country when the complexity of our research projects is considered using criteria set by the National Institute of Healthcare Research.

We can best serve our local population by working collaboratively with our partners across the local health and social care system, including Portsmouth City Council, Hampshire County Council, South Central Ambulance Service, PCNs and CCGs across Portsmouth and South East Hampshire (PSEH) to respond to the growing pressures and mitigate the impact of an increasingly ageing population. We are involved in a number of local and regional relationships, including the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Sustainability and Transformation Partnership (STP) and are active partners in the PSEH Integrated Care Partnership. The success of our service is dependent on the success of the system, and vice versa. We fundamentally cannot deliver our Strategy without working together.