A bank administrator who is excellent in everything she does to support our occupational health clinics and a clinical nurse specialist in oncology who goes above and beyond are the winners of July’s You Made a Difference awards.
Deborah Pammenter first started a placement at occupational health (OH) to help with a flu campaign almost two years ago. Since then she has helped at OH in various roles including multiple flu campaigns, scanning projects and Covid clinics.
Deborah was a huge support to the OH team at the Covid vaccination clinic, helping to successfully vaccinate staff and patients. She stepped up to take on a demanding role supporting the administration team, helped with staff inductions with hundreds of staff helping at the clinics over five months.
She also helped ensure the wellbeing of staff, making sure staff at all levels had their breaks, and even offered to take over tasks to allow others a break.
Deborah is excellent at helping team members to succeed and has an eye for detail. She is always striving to improve and suggests service improvements and ideas to help the team do better and improve our services and patient care at OH.
This is reflected in the winning nomination, extracts of which told us:
Deb embodies every aspect of the Trust Values; she is compassionate and actively kind to both patients and colleagues.
Deb has gone above and beyond to support the Covid vaccination clinics. She championed the wellbeing of all staff; such as making sure everyone was taking breaks as well as improving the way our clinics were run, by always adapting her own work and suggesting changes to others, thus improving the quality of patient care.
Deb also heavily supported the senior project manager to operationally run a seven day clinic which resulted in giving 44,000 vaccinations in under five months to all patients, all with a smile and positive attitude.
Without her, clinics would have not been so smooth running, enjoyable and a welcoming place. Thank you Deb for being you; so hard working and excellent in everything you do.
Jill Barker has worked in the Trust for 19 years, starting in the medical assessment unit in 2002. She has been a specialist nurse for 11 years now, and for the last six years has been working with the HPB (hepato-pancreatico-biliary) oncology team as a clinical specialist nurse. Jill works closely with the multidisciplinary team to look after cancer patients and their families through what is an incredibly difficult physical and psychological journey.
She is looking forward to developing her role further with the Trust in the year ahead, and also developing her part as a committee member of the Pancreatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland.
Jill is a valued member of the oncology CNS (clinical nurse specialist) team and continues to bring a wealth of experience, support and humour to the team.
This is the second You Made a Difference win for Jill, who first won the award in August 2014!
This excellent achievement is reflected in two nominations, extracts of which told us:
My husband has pancreatic cancer stage 4 and is often in a lot of pain. We have been trying for a few months to have the celiac plexus block operation. I spoke to Jill last week about this and she got onto the situation immediately, contacting a consultant who she felt could help. Within a couple of days we had a phone call to book the procedure for the following week. We are so grateful to Jill for arranging this as we feel that it will make a big difference to his quality of life.
Jill has been really supporting and very helpful during his cancer journey, it’s good to know that she is at the end of the phone if we need help (and we have done!). Nothing is too much trouble.
Another nomination commented:
While I have been on chemotherapy these last five months Jill has come to see how I am doing when she is in the hospital. This makes so much difference. I have never seen her without a smile, and usually a funny quip to go with it which makes me laugh.
I have tried to match her with a response to make her laugh too. She deserves that. She also smooths my way with hospital appointments that I have found hard on the chemotherapy to follow up myself. She is a gem!