[S]taff at North Cumbria University Hospitals NHS Trust have been recognised for their exceptional efforts as part of a new staff reward scheme.
The #YouDidIt awards will take place on a quarterly basis, awarding both an individual award and a team award. Staff can nominate a colleague or team who have gone the extra mile, demonstrating the Trust’s values and behaviours over a prolonged period of time for the benefit of patients and staff. The nominations then go to a panel made up of staff members and staff representatives.
The winner of the individual award was Barbara Pinguey, specialist physiotherapist, for leading the way in introducing initiatives across the Trust to get patients up, dressed and moving. Barbara launched national campaigns #endpjparalysis and #Red2Green as she wanted to focus on ensuring patients can speed up their recovery in order to get home sooner and maintain their normal routines.
As a result of Barbara’s campaign, she has inspired many members of staff to get involved and the Trust is already seeing an increase in the number of patients who are up and dressed.
The team award went to the medical staff attraction & agency team for their efforts in reducing the Trust’s overall spend on locum staff which has been closely linked to improvements in patient safety and quality. The team was established in October 2016 and since then, there has been a £5m reduction in spend on locum staff, for which they were also shortlisted for a national award. The team is also playing a vital role in attracting more permanent clinical staff to work at the Trust.
Christine Brereton, director of human resources at the Trust, said: “We place huge importance on staff recognition and celebrating success at the Trust. We already have a weekly Glimpse of Brilliance which is shared very successfully with staff and on social media and we wanted to expand this further with the introduction of #YouDidIt which is a more formal award.
“We were delighted to receive a lot of applications for the first award and we hope to receive even more in the next round of nominations which are now open. I would like to congratulate Barbara and the medical staff agency team for their huge contribution to the Trust; they are both very worthy winners. I would also like to say well done to everyone who was nominated; the panel had a hard job deciding on our winners as we so many examples of staff who go above and beyond.”
In addition to the winners, the panel awarded ‘highly commended’ to the Acute Frailty Unit at the Cumberland Infirmary and the Orthopaedic Surgical Site Infection Surveillance Team for their excellent work. The team and individual winners from each quarter will be invited to a lunch with the Trust Board to personally celebrate their achievements and overall winners of the year will be announced.
