Publish date: 6 January 2022
November's Employee of the Month winner is Shirley Cummings, Talk Liverpool, nominated by Joanne Pinnington
"Shirley has been instrumental in getting the service back in the Newhall hub after the pandemic. The service was told we had to return to the hubs, with a relatively short timeframe, after 18 months away, and the building had been left over this period of time. Shirley picked up this work due to sickness/annual leave alongside her current already high workload and created a plan to support the re-opening of the building. This involved contacting/discussing/meeting with various Trust departments such Infection control, estates, facilities management, and IT. In doing all this work Shirley has supported the Operational Lead in taking on most of the tasks involved, to ensure there was a safe, secure environment for staff to return too. Shirley has travelled backwards and forwards to the site both within office hours and in her own time at the weekends to meet with contractors to get work done on the building to allow it to open by the required date.
Without Shirley going the extra mile for the service we wouldn’t have been able to re-open the building to staff and patients. This has enabled us to offer patients face to face appointments once again, in a safe environment. Shirley has received many thanks from staff as to how well the re-opening has been handled, and staff are now happy working in Newhall, despite initial anxieties. Patients are now benefiting from seeing their therapists rather than tell calls as we had a number of patients who wanted to wait for Face-to-face therapy and due to all the work that Shirley has completed this can now happen. Shirley is managing staff rotas to ensure the required covid rules are in place again this is over and above Shirley’s role as PM within the team. The support that Shirley has given to the patients, the service and SMT has been invaluable. Everything has been managed to a high standard and the transition has been seamless for both staff and patients alike. Thank you, Shirley."
November's Team of the Month winner is Breeze Hill Treatment Room nominated by Joyce Collier
"We were called for help by the phlebotomy team leader when a member of their staff fell ill on 3 November 21. NCP J. Davies and I attended the situation and monitored the phlebotomist until the ambulance came as she was having recurrent TIA's. The other members of our team (as named above) worked effortlessly to continue to run the treatment room clinics with 2 members of staff short (as we were with the phlebotomist). We gave support and advice to the phlebotomist’s partner and daughter and we liaised and informed our Service Leads of the situation whilst waiting 4 hours for an ambulance. We pulled together to work as a team to provide care and support to all involved in an extremely stressful and emergency situation.
This enabled the treatment room service clinic to continue to run with little disruption to the service and with our support to the phlebotomy team it enabled them to continue with their service also. As NCP J. Davies and I (also the ANP nurse Jane from Grey Road surgery) stayed calm throughout the situation this then helped the phlebotomy staff to staff calm even though they were extremely upset as their colleague was having mini strokes. Both teams pulled together and supported each other in an emergency and stressful situation."