Environment Portering Team – Unsung Hero Awards

Nomination

Award Category:

Estates & Ancillary

Individual or Team Nomination?

Team

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 :

During the early part of the pandemic, many of the non-clinical support staff had concerns about safety and worried about going into clinical areas to carry out their daily tasks. Some also felt that they were doing a thankless job. The Portering team faced huge challenges on a day-to-day basis at a time when the country was dealing with a dangerous new disease with no known effective drugs/treatments. There were also issues with PPEs, not enough testing/tracing facilities, huge demand on hospital beds and on the related support services provided by the Porters. Many operational support teams suffered staff shortages caused by sickness absence. Sadly, the John Radcliffe Hospital’s Portering team lost colleagues during the fight against this awful Covid-19 disease. This devastating news affected everyone in the Environment Portering Team but the dedicated staff put their duties and responsibilities above fear. They listened to the Hospital’s safety guidance and took steps to manage their personal safety whilst ensuring all the waste streams are correctly applied and all containers are properly labelled with traceability tags. During the peak of the pandemic, many acute hospitals reported problems with clinical waste accumulating on their sites and had issues with lack of container capacity. The John Radcliffe’s Environment team decanted, filled and utilised all the containers to maximise waste capacity. Our hospital is one of the few that did not have problems with waste capacity and collection. This hard-working team of people just kept going and continued to take pride in what they do. Their attendance remained good throughout the pandemic. Not only they rose to the challenge of handling high risk infectious Covid waste, but they also helped the hospital in responding to the rapid surge in demand for extra waste capacity. The Hospital's waste went from a daily average of 50-60 to 150-160 x large 770L containers a day. During this very busy period, they also facilitated multiple ward/departmental moves to support the hospital's Covid admission response. Not a single word of complaint nor hesitation in any way. They are the true unsung heroes; as a waste contract manager and a customer department at the receiving end of their service, I am very proud to have worked with such an efficient and dedicated team of support staff. I was extremely grateful to many of their Service Operatives who provided regular mobile communication regarding the hospital’s waste bin status 7 days a week including the festive Christmas and New Year’s Bank Holidays. This real time information contributed hugely to the safe and successful transfer of the hospital's clinical waste during the pandemic. Their loyalty to the Hospital and their commitment to serve our patients should be commended. Please give our unsung heroes a big shout!