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 July is:

Sarah Clark, Specialist Health Practitioner in Healthy Lifestyles and Norfolk Infant Feeding Lead

Sarah was nominated by Wendy Housden, for working relentlessly and passionately over the past six months, working well beyond her contracted hours. She has led a new team of Infant Feeding Champions and together they have raised standards across the service whilst working towards the Unicef Baby Friendly Initiative level 3 re-accreditation. 

Sarah is always up to date with new research around Infant Feeding and quickly shares her knowledge with the team and wider workforce. Without her passion, drive, and enthusiasm they would not have achieved the Unicef level 3 re-accreditation on the 13th July; a fantastic achievement! An amazing, fun and supportive lady!

Congratulations to Sarah!

Other nominees were:

Pauline Cleeton, ICT Administrator, ICT, St Ives
Vicki Budd nominated Pauline to recognise her for the work she does for the Trust, often going over and above to assist others. A recent example was her essential help to Vicki in reinstating a closed down temporary account and also setting up a brand new one to use for recruitment interviews. Regardless of whatever else Pauline has on, she will respond immediately and does whatever is in her power to resolve the issue. They have the confidence to leave her to complete the job and let you know the outcome. Vicki said: "I have also witnessed Pauline helping colleagues regularly (often at a moments notice), which in turn allows them to get on with their day job. We do have a 'shining star' in Pauline and I would like to put her forward for the monthly Shine a Light Award."

Caroline Gibbs, Receptionist, Huntingdon Dental HealthCare
Caroline was nominated by Nicola Jeffrey, who said: "Caroline is not one to boast about her own qualities but when I picked up the phone to congratulate her on the lovely feedback below on NHS Choices she further surprised me. She had arrived to work especially early as she had heard that a clinician colleague was off sick so she wanted to ensure patient bookings for that day were cancelled in good time before patients set off to the clinic. Sometimes it is the small things that people do that can make a big difference to patient experience and Caroline definitely goes that extra mile to help our service users."

Here is extract from NHS Choices regarding the help that Caroline gave one of our Service Users: "My 11 year old daughter lost part of her front tooth today. When a dental practice in Cambourne was unwilling to see her today I contacted the Huntingdon Hospital dental dept. and spoke with the receptionist. They were absolutely wonderful. The receptionist explained about the 'duty of care' and was willing to speak to the receptionist at the Cambourne dental practice and echo the conversation regarding the 'duty of care.' Surprisingly, a cancellation happened and they were able to see my daughter this morning. It should not be that those people who shout the loudest get the help but sadly it seems to be the case. Thank you to the receptionist you are a real asset to your work, with your compassion and 'above and beyond' professionalism.

Brenda Bean and Laura MacKenzie, Acting Lead Outpatients and Medical Records Co-ordinator, Outpatients, Princess of Wales Hospital, Ely
Brenda and Laura were nominated by Sarah-Jane Gill. Following immediate cancellation of 10 clinics within the dermatology service Brenda and Laura managed to completely facilitate the rebooking of over 90 patients. This required significant administrative workarounds, management of e-RS, flexibility of consultant scheduling, identifying new clinical resource and keeping patients, internal stakeholders and the CCG updated. Brenda and Laura had to work quickly and effectively to mitigate for this with almost no notice. The dermatology service is already heavily subscribed and so identifying additional capacity is even more difficult than with other outpatient clinics. 

They worked incredibly hard to ensure patients weren't affected and through this managed to ensure that no patient pathway was compromised. Sarah-Jane was extremely impressed with their work under pressure and their patient first approach.

Congratulations to everyone who was nominated this month.