2020 Winners

Congratulations Tina Mitchell, winner of a Star Award presented by Louise Lester, Director of HR.

Tina was nominated by patient Tony Richardson who said "I wish to nominate Specialist Urology Nurse Tina Mitchell to receive the Star award as such for recognition of her dedication and commitment to her patients. I have been a patient of the urology department, Poplar unit for more than a year and at the start of my treatment I had been fitted with a long term catheter.

Throughout the past year catheter problems have occurred and being the anxious person that I am I had cause to phone the on duty specialist urology nurse. Tina was the person I got through to on the first occasion and the advice she gave me was superb.

This meant from my point of view I had now found a contact that I trusted completely. If when calling Tina’s phone it was on the answer phone she would never fail to return my call that same day. In response Tina would fully explain my concerns and relax my anxiousness.

Tina always found time to see me as a priority following the phone discussion and invariably most times an unplanned visit would be needed to change the catheter. Having held senior executive positions during my working career I firmly believed that employees must be recognised as employee assets."

Congratulations Redwood Ward on winning a Star Award presented by Louise Lester, Director of HR.  

Redwood ward were nominated by a patient's relative Anne Lincoln. Anne said "I would very much like to thank and commend the nursing and support staff on Redwood Ward, who cared for my late uncle so well and with such dignity. We, his family, were treated with great compassion in the last few days. He died on Thursday 28th November.

I would particularly like to single out staff nurse Emma, as well as the 'mouth care nurse' who was accompanied by a 3rd year student nurse from the University of Greenwich.

Thank you all for helping us in our loss. I am a midwife and former nurse, currently based at PRUH antenatal clinic, with the maternity diabetes team".

Congratulations to Karen Lohoar who has been awarded a star award. Karen was presented with her award by Steve Fenlon, Medical Director. She was nominated for the award by Katie Bergin who said "An email I received from Evergreen’s Manager today has prompted me to nominate Karen for a STAR award.

Karen has only been being part of the Gastroenterology admin team since May last year, after being displaced since the closure of Oak as a Gastroenterology ward.

Since then she has thrown herself into taking ownership of IBD patient management and all the prescription management that comes with it. She has taken on other responsibilities but the area for which she has made the biggest impact is how she has improved the quality of care the Trust provides to patients who attend Evergreen for biologic infusions.

Having her in place allows all parties involved in infusions (patients, pharmacy, and clinicians) to have a clear path of communication, which enables a streamlined, efficient and personable service.

She manages prescriptions and any queries relating to these, ensures bloods are done in the appropriate timeframe, aide clinicians in the monitoring of patients in specific drugs and applies for and monitors funding for high cost drugs, amongst others.

In the aforementioned email, the Manager of Evergreen states that there has been tremendous positive feedback from patients since she has been in place and feel that she is now indispensable in the coordination of biologics patients.

It is a pleasure to have Karen as part of my team and she is a credit to herself as she has been able to take on a new role and make such a difference to the service." ⭐

Well done Karen.

Congratulations to Rina Tesfaie, winner of a Star Award presented by Steve Fenlon, Medical Director.  Rina was nominated by Delvinder Johal, EBME Supervisors who said "Rina has been at the trust for just over 3 years now and since then as revolutionised the way the trust implements and records clinical training for medical devices.

When Rina came in to post there was no predecessor to follow therefore She built the whole training database, clinical training records, Training days, promoting safe clinical use of devices and much more from scratch.

The work Rina has continued to do for the trust has helped so many members of staff not only to work safer but also to help them build their confidence in using the wide and complex array for medical equipment we have.

Between Darent Valley, Queen Mary’s and many more small sites, Rina has gone above and beyond in making sure she can deliver the best training possible for her audience. She has shown several times of how she has adapted to the needs of the clinical staff she is training and worked around their busy schedules. Worked beyond her normal hours of work and showed amazing professionalism in challenging environments without even having a training room of her own to provide the training since she began.

Rina has always been proactive in her teaching and she always has the needs of the people she is training as the first priority. She is always so well prepared for her role and makes sure she far exceeds the quality of teaching what a rep will provide from an outside company.

I believe that Rina has a excellent manner in which she approaches her work and sets a truly exceptional example to her fellow peers and the patients of how to go above and beyond the job role.  She is a great roles model who shows the trust beliefs and goals in action every day.