Michelle Houghton-excellent 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 :

Michelle started working at Page Hall Medical Centre 5 years ago as an apprentice health care assistant, having decided she wanted a change in direction from the world of retail to the rapidly changing world of the NHS. She immediately became an integral member of the team, and adapted admirably to working with our disadvantaged multi-ethnic community where up to 50% of consultations require the support of an interpreter. She became popular with patients and colleagues alike and very quickly started to innovate – setting up a pilot weight loss programme for the local Roma Slovak community, who at the time were generally not aware of the risks of obesity. In the summer of 2018 we found ourselves without a practice manager for 3 months, and Michelle stepped up to help, using her naturally refined organisational skills to keep systems running smoothly during the period of instability. She became assistant to the new practice manager in September 2018, moving to deputy manager in early 2020 and in September 2020 took on the role of practice manager. Throughout her time before becoming manager she had already built strong relationships with the practice team, which meant that she had the backing of the whole team when she accepted the job of manager. She needed a lot of support to believe that she could do the job, but nearly 1 year on she is flying in the role and transforming the practice as she goes. Michelle has a natural ability to cut to the chase and focus on the most important issues. She is developing systems which we have failed to do for years, and has retained the backing of the whole team throughout every development. She is building respect from the local network of managers and has an astute grasp of local and national politics. Michelle places a strong focus on staff wellbeing and has established good communication channels within and across practice teams. She has enabled safe team celebrations during the Covid-19 pandemic, including a socially distanced Page Hall Bake Off competition in the Autumn of 2020, and successfully nominated the team for a Hidden Heroes award. Due to significant funding cuts over the last 6 years, the partnership has shrunk from 5 to 3 partners, putting substantial additional pressure on the partners, which meant that we were often working 12-14 hour days. Michelle has the ambition to enable us to improve our work-life balance, and we can already see results. We even feel looked after as partners. She is the glue that holds everything together. Michelle also has a great rapport with our patients, providing reassurance and resolving concerns and complaints with ease, charm and pragmatism. We have had 5 practice managers in the last 5 years, most with years of experience of management across various organisations, and with a range of management qualifications. Each brought expertise in their specific fields, but with Michelle we feel like we have hit the jackpot! We feel we are now in safe, competent and skilful hands and are excited about what we can achieve for the staff and patients of Page Hall Medical Centre.