This award is an opportunity for patients, families, visitors and Trust colleagues to say ‘thank you – you made a difference’ to a member of staff or a team for anything (however small!) that helped make their experience of our services better.

The winner for May 2019 is: Sarah Walker, Health Visitor, Bedfordshire

Sarah was nominated by Melanie Hayes, 0-19 Team Manager Bedford Locality, after she received extremely positive feedback from Elizabeth Green, Social Worker Family Support at Bedford Borough Council.

Elizabeth said: “Sarah’s outstanding in her work; she’s one of the best health visitors I’ve ever worked with in my career. She goes over, above and beyond her role to ensure that the children are always safeguarded and her knowledge of safeguarding, options and alternatives in regards to best outcomes for children is second to none.”

Huge congratulations to Sarah!

Also nominated this month:

Chris Sharp, Matron - Infection Prevention and Control

Chris was nominated by Sarah-Jane Gill for leading another successful flu campaign for 18/19. Sarah-Jane said: “This is a difficult task requiring a lot of logistical planning to get out to teams and provide the immunisations, ensure vaccines are ordered/stored/available, develop and support the ongoing campaign for flu fighting and engage in national forums to track progress and share lessons learned.

“Chris worked hard to adapt to the needs of the Trust, adjusting approach and scheduling to suit team needs, being creative around campaigning for vaccination to ensure all staff were aware of the benefit and how to access.

“He worked with the Workforce Team to improve tracking of vaccination levels and spent a significant amount of time delivering the vaccines to staff with care. As a result of Chris's diligent and dedicated approach, the Trust met the CQUIN required target in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough of 75%. This is the highest coverage we’ve ever achieved and a full CQUIN payment associated.”

Tanisha Saboo and Ewelina Wojcik, MSK Physiotherapists, Dynamic Health/ Peterborough

Tanisha and Ewelina were nominated by Raj Thirunageswaram who on behalf of the Peterborough MSK Physiotherapy Team for going above and beyond their normal duties when another member of staff had to take emergency carers leave for more than two weeks and clinics had to be cancelled.

Tanisha and Ewelina responded swiftly to an email from the Team Lead asking if anyone could help. Tanisha came to work on her non- working days and Ewelina cancelled her four days’ annual leave so they could see their colleague’s patients.  Raj said: “As a result of their response and fabulous work, clinics were not interrupted, urgent patients were seen on time, and complaints avoided.”

Dental Epidemiology Team, Peterborough

The Dental Epidemiology Team was nominated by Julia Hallam-Seagrave for undertaking the five year old children oral health survey which involved examining 584 children over Cambridgeshire. This involved linking with local authorities and schools and was a hugely demanding, time consuming study.

Kelli McCormack, Personal Assistant, Dental

Kelli was nominated by Coral Hill for taking on the role of BASCD Administrator for the service. BASCD is the UK’s professional association for the science, philosophy and practice of promoting the oral health of populations and groups in society. Each year the service is asked to support the national survey which runs over a period of nine months.

Coral said: “This task is time-consuming and challenging as Kelli has to rely on the cooperation of local councils and schools to release information to enable the service to carry out the survey. With GDPR this job has become even more of a challenge as local authorities are reluctant to participate, however Kelli persevered so the service could meet its contractual obligation.

“There are very tight timescales to deliver the survey and the challenge can become quite stressful at times. The dental service topped the CCS research leader board for participation in research in 2018-2019. This is credit to the small team who deliver this survey, and without Kelli's resilience, perseverance and hard work the survey couldn’t be achieved.”

Samantha Nunn, Research Facilitator, Quality Team- Norfolk Based

Samantha was nominated by Matthew Pearson who said: “Sam has been supporting CRN research projects within the Trust more than three years, supporting the research capacity to grow significantly, and leading to another year increase to 976 recruits in 2018-2019.

“Her hard work and integration within the clinical teams is leading to outstanding research provision being provided in our iCaSH service, and her new focus on children’s and young person’s research delivery will bear fruit in 2019-2020. The success of our increased undertaking wouldn’t be possible without Sam. Her visibility around the Trust and within the CRN workstreams is phenomenal, and her impact as an ambassador not only for the Trust, but also for research shouldn’t be underestimated”.

Elizabeth Wainwright, Specialist Speech and Language Therapist, Paediatric SLT

Elizabeth was nominated by Jo Drew for providing a fantastic service to a patient. Jo said: “This patient previously had cause to complain, but Elizabeth's intervention eventually turned things round and resulted in the parent contacting the service to describe the excellent service they had subsequently received.”

Amy Gannon, Clinical Admin Assistant – SNSN, Children’s Community Nursing

Amy was nominated by Kathy Unwin who said: “Amy is doing a great job! Due to sickness/absence in our team she’s constantly taking on extra work and juggling things about so that all work is completed. She’s always smiling and has never complained about her increased workload. She just keeps her head down and gets on with it. Amy's such a pleasure to be around and to work with.”

Sharon Boddington, Recruitment Coordinator, Corporate

Sharon was nominated by John Sykes for her calm, proactive demeanour and for guiding John through every step of the process to help him recruit new personnel.  John said: “For CCS to resonate throughout with high quality personnel, this can only happen if guidance is given in getting the right person in the right role. Sharon’s key to achieving this; she’s been a consummate professional throughout and a pleasure to accept guidance from. Her input has reflected on me and my team employing high calibre individuals who will be absolutely ideal for the role they applied to undertake.”

Marion Eaton, Lead Nurse, Cancer and Palliative Care

Marion was nominated by the Cancer and Palliative Care Team for working tirelessly for the team and the Trust and for her ‘open door’ policy for team members which ensures they feel supported and valued. The Team said: “Marion’s knowledge of palliative care is wide and she’s always working hard to promote and implement national and Trust initiatives involving cancer and palliative care. Marion regularly champions the clinical issues she sees as important for improvement in care provision for the team’s patients and works collaboratively to ensure best practice is communicated and implemented, even though the challenges she faces often make this difficult.

“Recently, Marion worked on the ‘End of Life Template’ which she’s been instrumental in rolling out across the Trust. This will improve care for people nearing the end of life and enable better planning and provision of care for CCS patients and their families. Marion’s job involves many different roles and responsibilities and even though she has so many demands on her time, she always has a kind word for everyone and is a true team player. “

Cliona Hann, Head of Management Accounts, Corporate – Finance

Cliona was nominated by Sherrie Wood for her perseverance, dedication, hard work and empathetic approach, which carried her team through a difficult period of budgeting where the impact fell in between significant reporting periods.

Sherrie said: “Cliona effortlessly provides support to many corporate functions, senior management of all services and continuously to her Management Accountants Team. I’m unsure how she does it, but Cliona’s an aspiration and it’s a privilege to have her as my manager.”

Joe Corcoran, Assistant Dietetic Practitioner, Nutrition and Dietetics, Food First Team

Joe was nominated by Vittoria Romano and Catie Blanchard for his role in supporting care homes for older people to meet Care Quality Commissions (CQC) regulations, in particular regulation 14 meeting nutritional and hydration needs. Vittoria and Catie said: “During his short career with us, Joe’s faced many challenging conversations and situations with care homes when standards haven’t been met, and he’s shown great courage and determination to autonomously support care homes to improve the quality of the nutritional care they provide.

“Joe appropriately seeks support from his managers but also bravely tackles any challenges even though many Band 4s would hand over to more senior staff. For example Joe always remained calm, friendly and approachable even when dealing with frustrated and angry care home managers that question his decision-making. As a consequence many care homes have since improved their nutritional care practice and our care home residents are receiving much safer nutritional care that meets their needs.

“Joe’s a valued and important member of our team; he always has a positive attitude and supports all levels of staff. We’re privileged to work with him!”

Huge congratulations to all this month’s nominees!