Colette Hall – Unsung Hero Awards

Nomination

Award Category:

Corporate Services

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 :

The COVID-19 Pandemic has challenged us in ways we have never been challenged before. During this extraordinary time, staff rose to the challenge and did amazing things. Colette is one of those people. During the first wave no ne really knew what we were dealing with and many of our staff began working from home due to associated risks or working flexibly to look after their children due to lockdown. Colette came in every day and put in long hours to deliver the things that don't always get noticed but are vital to the success of any project. We were asked to open 7 inpatient wards across Essex and London within a very short period of time. Every medicines cupboard that went on the walls, every trolley and emergency medicines box prepared was achieved through Colette's hard work in ensuring we opened our wards within the required timeline. She worked tirelessly to ensure medicines required to facilitate discharges and support community teams were procured and available. Colette was the person everyone looked towards when posters, communication books, cupboards, fridges, equipment and special medicines were needed. She didn't once stop to think about the risks of COVID-19 to herself or her family whilst working in a patient facing environment and her main focus was to move forward and deliver what was asked of her. We came out of the first wave and she was given a project to install wireless temperature monitoring devices across our Trust. While most services were moving into recovery phase, we as a department charged ahead to complete pre COVID projects and Colette didn't hesitate to get going. Whilst it was not a project that she had the technical skills to deliver, she made every effort to gain the knowledge she needed to deliver the project with little support from others. As we moved closer to Christmas we entered the second wave and we were tasked with opening 4 vaccination centres and the second Nightingale Hospital in London. Colette once again stepped up to the plate and supported the ordering of fridges, equipment and designing of fridge monitoring and vaccine stock control books even though she is not clinically trained. She has acquired a huge amount of knowledge having worked in pharmacy over the years and was able to apply what she had learnt. Many of our staff at this stage were coming down with the COVID-19 infection and staffing became challenging. Colette stepped up to the challenge and took on the roll of ordering medicines and cupboards and setting up the medicines in the pharmacy at the Nightingale Hospital. We had three weeks in which to set up the hospital pharmacy, ready to support the rest of London acute hospitals and bed pressures. Unfortunately Colette came down with COVID-19 infection herself early January and was poorly for a while. She returned to work with a "can do" attitude and was determined to overcome the extreme fatigue she had experienced as a result of her illness. Colette has never said "no" to anything that has been asked of her and will try her best to do what she can. We are grateful for all her support and would like to thank her for being the cog in the wheel without which we could not function.