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 winners for October 2015 are:

The Community Matron HCA's and Petrina Kaye, Line Manager, Ranstad Court, Luton

The Community Matron Health Care Assistants along with their Line manager Petrina Kaye were nominated by Sarah Munroe for being paramount in supporting the Community Phlebotomy Team while they have struggled with staff shortages.

Petrina has taken the time to allocate staff regularly and all the HCA's have taken on the extra task without complaint. They often contact the Phlebotomy team when they have capacity to help or they are visiting a patient anyway who also requires a blood test. This support has kept the Community Phlebotomy service going during a very difficult time.

Congratulations to Sharon Smith, Joanne Blower, Katie Toyer, June Leonard, Karen Neumann and Petrina Kaye.

Other nominations included:

Wayne Ovenstone, IM and T Operations Manager, IM and T Department, St Ives
Wayne Ovenstone was nominated by Sarah Saul for always going the extra mile to support front line services at all times. He is always working to resolve IT delays, issues with speed of PCs, problems with processes and with SERCO - his determined attitude means that he got to the bottom of issues they had at Ely and would not let things rest until the situation was sorted. He has helped to get IT equipment for a staff member who had to suddenly work from home. He always helps when staff are stuck, in need of advice, will pop in when passing and will work to make IT simple for all.

He always says hello, is never too busy to smile and acknowledge you and he is approachable with anything. He doesn't make you feel small for asking either. Staff find him friendly, calm and always willing. The organisation could not do without Wayne - his ability to pull things out of a hat and assist when others wouldn't makes him fully deserve this award. We are as a unit indebted to his support and he is a really nice chap too!

Leah Moors, Speech and Language Therapist, Cambridge
Lynn Millard, team leader for Cambridge speech and language therapy nominated Leah for 'going the extra mile' for children and their families. She is a respected and valued member of the team and her friendliness, openness and honesty with both colleagues and service users ensures the best possible outcome for the child. She is a good listener and always tries to find a solution that helps everyone involved. She provides innovative ideas for service delivery and is keen to participate in effective service redesign strategies. She motivates members of her team to do the same in order to provide consistently high quality speech and language therapy for children in Cambridgeshire. Glad to have you on our team Leah and so are the families

Dawn Adams, Admin Lead -Dynamic Health, Huntingdon
Dawn was commended by Sarah Saul for working tirelessly to hold the admin team together during a period of turbulence. She has demonstrated flexibility, reassurance, support, assistance, help and guidance whilst they work to recruit and bring in new team members. She has supported the training, recruitment and competence of agency staff that fill in gaps during this period. She has also become proficient at NHS jobs2 and learnt all that this entails speedily and without fuss. She has also led, with Lisa Pitney Baxter, the merging of SystmOne units which went live at the beginning of October and has made herself available to train, instruct and make competent the staff on this new way of working.

She just gets on with it and works tirelessly to make sure the unit functions as well as supporting Sarah

Raquel Nakila, DVT & Anticoagulant Sister, Luton Treatment Centre
Raquel was nominated by Rachel Kremer for being very proactive by completing the Datix forms for each poor or missing referral the Anticoagulant Clinic has received and also chasing up the missing information. This is enabling the service to take this forward and to improve the service provided.

Helena Wilson, Community Nursing Sister, Community Nursing team
Helena has been commended by the son of one of her patient's for the care she gave to his father during his final week. Helena was instrumental in ensuring all care was provided; including chasing a social care package that had been delayed. The patient’s son described Helena as being: Professional and empathetic which provided comfort and assurance to the family. In his words “Helena is in the true sense, what the NHS requires. She is of the utmost professionalism coupled with true empathy and has a whole hearted passion for caring.”

Well done to you all!