Materials Management and Receipt & Distribution

Nomination

Award Category:

Corporate Services

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 :

At the commencement of the pandemic the challenges associated with PPE were complex & unfolded as the supply & distribution chains across the world were disrupted & demand increased to unprecedented levels. As the national number of COVID-19 cases increased, there were escalating demands for PPE with a rapidly depleting stockpile & limited PPE domestic supply. Throughout 2020/21, the Materials Management and Stores team at Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS FT were exceptional. Each member of the team pulled together despite continuing issues with supply to ensure that every member of staff in our hospital had access to a stipulated list of PPE consumables on a daily basis. As a department in April 2020 we implemented a daily stock count & replenishment of these PPE stock lines in each clinical area which also included the weekends. This was on top of our BAU service. As an example at the height of Wave 1 we were replacing 650 gowns, 13900 Type IIR masks, 9600 aprons, 6900 visors & 38,000 pairs of exam gloves every 24 hours across the trust to ensure we could protect our staff and patients. Communication was shared with the team sometimes hourly as patient demand often spiked as well changes to infection control guidance. As a team they were cohesive with strong leadership filtering down and a shared ‘can do’ attitude. The team shared their personal worries, their workload & escalated issues immediately. Each acknowledged & listened when their colleagues were struggling mentally & rallied round to keep spirits high to get to the end of the day. The positive team work ethic underpinned the team’s survival & each member put their own personal safety on the line. The materials management service was one of the very few non clinical services that were hospital-based & actually exposed to the hazards & risks in clinical areas. Individual members of the team provided me with testimonials of their personal experience of how they survived this unprecedented demand on our service working under a prolonged period of extreme pressure. “I carried on due to commitment tenacity and resilience. If the job I do saves lives I’ll do it. Big picture was we were needed, we serviced that need. Humour played a big part in handling stress & we had a laugh when we could.” “One of the biggest things for me was the motivation we gave each other on the days we felt as though we just couldn’t carry one at the pace we were having to work at.” “It was an acknowledgement of our duty … who else would do our job? We were the lynchpin of the service in being able to contribute to the delivery of vital PPE” I am incredibly proud of how everybody dug deep and kept on digging deeper in the most challenging circumstances. We did not run out of PPE once and we suffered no COVID related sickness from working within the hospital environment. A mini snapshot of the team camaraderie during the year is attached to demonstrate the 'can-do' team attitude!