Vicky Robinson-strong nomination

Nomination

Award Category:

Admin & Clerical

Individual or Team Nomination?

Individual

Qualifying Qualities

In these challenging times, nominators were asked to show how the nominee had demonstrated the following qualities:

Exceptional work ethic - going above and beyond their job description, especially in the past 12 months.
Outstanding achievement/s in work or outside of the organisation where relevant.
Drive for innovation and proactive leadership in these challenging times.
High level of interpersonal skills, such as kindness, empathy, loyalty and thoughtfulness to staff and patients.
A resilience considering Covid to their role and to the health and wellbeing of their colleagues.

Nominators Answer

Nominee's story :

Vicky is my rota manager on my surgery placement. I’m a first year foundation doctor who was told, after just a couple of months of part-time work, that I had to shield due to my elevated COVID risk. This was a real blow and I was out of work for nearly 6 months. On my return, Vicky was in charge of organising my rota. I was incredibly nervous and felt that my confidence was at an all-time low and my skills had eroded during my time out. Vicky was incredibly kind, reassuring, and helpful, and took the time to talk to me on the phone about my worries and giving me encouragement and advice, including connecting me with another junior who had had a similar experience. I ended up going back on a supernumerary contract for 3 months to build up my skills and Vicky was always there helping me to arrange my rota, sorting out some tricky moments when I was ill and needing to swap shifts. She went out of her way to be supportive and flexible and to get the best out of me and get me to believe I could come back to work and manage it all. I honestly thought I might resign but Vicky was pivotal in keeping me positive and focused about coming back into training after the stresses of the pandemic. Vicky was crucial to my staying in post and not leaving the NHS during this difficult period. On the face of it, her job involves sorting out rotas for the surgical doctors, but she has been so much more than that for me: she has been the person there for me when I had my biggest career wobble, overcome with self-doubt. In doing so, she has saved my career from faltering and the NHS the considerable investment it had already made in my training. I am extremely grateful for her calm, friendly, and supportive disposition and I truly believe she is one of many unrecognised NHS heroes who have helped the whole system to function during an unprecedented period of upheaval. As a junior and also a mature student and a mum-of-six trying to juggle work and family and self-doubt and patient care, Vicky has been the warm face of the NHS and has shown an accommodating and ‘can-do’ spirit that has kept my ship afloat. I’m so thankful that with her support, I was able to work as the doctor I’d worked so hard to be. Vicky is definitely my NHS hero - she’s smart, funny, quick to respond and looks out for a solution to any problem. But most of all, she was there to make things so much better when my career was taking a nose-dive. I’m so grateful to her for this. Being a rota manager is a very demanding job - that Vicky can do this with such good grace and make other people’s lives better at the same time, is a real skill and deserves recognition.