Sarah has just started her Nursing Associate programme with CCS and was nominated by Maria Nowshadi, Children's Community Nurses Team Lead, after receiving the email below from a family Sarah had been supporting. 

The email read: “Dear Sir/Madam, It is with great pleasure that we are writing this letter of recommendation for Sarah who has been supporting our family through Children’s Community Nursing Team since we brought our son Leo home from hospital in March 2020.

“Sarah has been a beacon of light in what I can describe as one of the most challenging years of our lives and we would recommend her to anyone needing similar support without any hesitation. She has always remained professional, while at the same time offered support, care and thoughtfulness of a really good friend. She has gone over and above her duties in supporting us over the last year for which we remain extremely grateful.

“Every single time Sarah has visited our home to provide care for our son she has welcomed us with a big smile and a friendly attitude. Even on those harder days when we felt overwhelmed and struggled to break a smile, she remained positive while still showing empathy to our difficulties.

“Additionally, she has always given special attention to our older son Oliver too, making him feel noticed and important while so much time was being devoted to his baby brother – Oliver’s collection of stickers he received from Sarah is still proudly displayed in our house.

“Sarah was quick to notice the practical difficulties we were facing with the dressing changes and took her own initiative to find solutions. Firstly, she organised for a play pen for Leo to keep him distracted and happy. This play pen has proven one of the best toys Leo has had and has served him for months after. Secondly, Sarah designed and built herself a special division board which was literally life changing. It allowed us to do the dressing changes without Leo’s hands touching and disturbing the exomphalos while giving Leo free hands to play, therefore making the dressing changes comfortable for him as well as for us. I cannot stress enough what a difference this has made to our lives, the simplest solution that no one else but Sarah has found and spent her time to develop for us. And mostly this was all from her own initiative, after she recognised the issues we had been having she went on a path to find a solution and she did it so successfully. Way over and above her duties as our son’s nurse.

"Throughout the year Sarah has always tried to find ways to make Leo’s and our lives easier – from finding a bandage that works best, to offering solutions to the problems we have been having with eczema on Leo’s skin and the reaction he’s had to the NG tube tapes. She has always kept us updated on the visiting times, correspondence from the hospital, any changes to the treatment plan and prescriptions, she has even come and seen us twice on the same day when we had to re-dress the exomphalos as one of the new treatments we were trying was a fiasco.

"Moreover, Sarah has organised a gradual transfer of care to the Cambridge team in view of our upcoming house move. Lastly, she did not limit her support just to the patient himself, she listened to my growing concerns about my own anxiety and mental health and before I knew myself I really needed it she offered to refer me for counselling sessions. Without Sarah’s referral and the help I have received thanks to it already, I would have been really struggling by now. Sarah’s proactivity, empathy and solution finding focus has made tremendous difference once again.

"To summarise, we are so grateful to have met Sarah and received her support and care throughout the last year. She is very dedicated and committed to her role and does not shy away from going the extra mile to help. She is naturally caring and compassionate, she can easily build a fantastic rapport with children of any age, and her proactive and solution finding focus is one of a kind. We will be always grateful to Sarah for making this very difficult year that much easier. We are confident she will be a great asset to any team she joins in the future and that she will continue to bring joy, hope and improvement to the lives of her patients and their families.”
  

What an amazing nomination showing the outstanding care provided by Sarah!

Other nominations this month included:

Michaela Langford, Speech & Language Therapist, SLT Cambridge Team

Michaela was nominated by Lynne Millard who said: "Michaela has worked tirelessly with a family to gain their trust in the service and therefore allow her to provide the right intervention. Their child presents with complex needs and the family were finding it difficult to accept she would not progress in the same way as her peers. After providing a tailored package of care to the family, I received the following feedback from the father of the child: 'I would like to thank Michaela for all the help she has given us and for teaching me so much about what to expect from F'. He added 'after being involved in the sessions, I have learnt so much about how to help our daughter' Michaela has done a great job and is a great example of our wonderful team. Thanks Michaela."

Hannah Burlinson, Physiotherapist, Dynamic Health, Brookfields, Cambridge

Hannah was nominated by a patient who said: "Hannah's a true professional, unruffled by meeting patients in person during the 2020 Pandemic."