The Only National Awards For Non-Medical / Non-Clinical NHS Staff & Volunteers

Nomination

Award Category:

Admin & Clerical

Individual or Team Nomination?

Individual

Nominators Answer

Nominee's story :

Gemma had been tasked to lead on a large system migration and version upgrades for the Endoscopy department, moving from one system to another. Although well supported by Endoscopy admin staff, East Kent IT and the supplier, Gemma has gone above and beyond during the project in all aspects, none more so highlighted after the a version upgrade. During the initial migration Gemma has been a source of all Endoscopy knowledge, she was the most vital point in the new system going live smoothly. She worked extra hours to ensure all bookings, surgery slots and patients were all showing ready for their procedures and clinicians could just access the system. However although she had shown amazing work ethic and resilience to the pressure and demand of the NHS, it is during the recent version upgrade where Gemma showed even more character. After the initial go live, there was a version upgrade, it had a huge admin impact, essentially removing bookings from surgery slots, overbooking theatre schedules, and completely losing procedure lists. Gemma strove to rectify these issues and managed to liaise with the supplier to help resolve the issues, whilst working and coordinating with the clinician teams to ensure patients were still seen and treated on time. She also worked extensively with her admin colleagues to ensure extra patients were not added too already full lists (even though not showing), adding missing patients to lists so clinical data could be written to. During these times she showed fantastic leadership to highlight issues to the supplier, work alongside them to resolve these problems. She worked over and above including many extra hours to fix data quality in the system, which ensured patients were still treated it did not affect the flow of patients through their care. A huge amount of time on top of her other day to day tasks was to test the fixes of the supplier in the Testing system to confirm fixes that were suggested and implement were thoroughly tested before being committed into live. This should not be understated on how long these things can take, and she often logged in Out of Hours to test and report back to get the fixes in as soon as possible. She is a huge credit to the department for coordinating a huge undertaking, something which is not actually in her job description. She has been extremely well supported by her boss Jade and other admin colleagues in the department. I was the East Kent IT assistance for the project, and although I helped with IT aspects, it was Gemma who made sure along with the supplier that this new IT system for the department was implemented and issues were resolved swiftly I think of the most noticeable reasons of her success is that a lot of these problems went under the radar and not fully known, as she was so dedicated to resolve and make sure it was a success for the department and for the Trust.