One of the nation’s leading nurses has been in Middlesbrough today (Tuesday 11 October) to help launch South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust’s annual Nightingale Awards.
Margaret Kitching MBE, regional chief nurse for the North East and Yorkshire, joined teams at The James Cook University Hospital to kick-off this year’s awards and talk to them about their journey over the last three years which has seen nurses, doctors and other health professionals come together to make the decisions about how resources are allocated and care is delivered across the trust.
“South Tees has been on an incredible journey and everyone, at every level in the trust, deserves a huge amount of credit for the enormous progress they have made.
Margaret Kitching
“I’m delighted to launch the nominations for this year’s South Tees Nightingale Awards which are a great opportunity to thank a nurse, healthcare assistant or midwife who gone above and beyond for you or your relatives in the last year.”
Sarah Callaghan, nurse consultant in interventional cardiology, who is coordinating the awards, added: “We would love to hear your stories and recognise our member of staff who have shown an exceptional level of patient care. Due to COVID we couldn’t host our usual annual awards ceremony so we are hoping that we can make up for it next year.”
Visit southtees.nhs.uk/about/nightingale/ to submit your nomination before Friday 7 April 2023 and see a full list of categories.
The winners will be announced at the awards ceremony held on Thursday 11 May 2023.
Award winner
At last year’s Nightingale Awards ward manager Jeanette Cramer won an award for her incredible leadership and contribution to patient care.
Jeanette, who works on James Cook’s ward six, was also crowned the overall Nightingale Award winner.
When presented her award, a delighted Jeanette said: “When I found out that I had won the Nightingale Award I was totally numb, I love my job, I am privileged to be a nurse. We are such a fantastic team on gastro and work together to deliver excellent patient care.”
She added: “My team are my backbone. It is an absolute honour to win the Nightingale Award. I have been to many award ceremonies and have seen some fantastic nurses win it, however I never thought for one minute that I would even be nominated.”