September’s You Made A Difference Team Award goes to a team of hospital engineers.
Brad Da Costa, hospital engineer; Marco Clinque, specialist electrical craftsperson, along with John and Colin, installation engineers, have a combined service with CUH of almost 60 years.
Brad is responsible for the Trust’s nurse call system, and organises the liaison with the wards as well as assisting with understanding the design requirements most suited to their particular environment.
Marco, John and Colin carry out reactive and new works for a variety of site systems and have lots of experience in modifying and repairing the nurse call.
When the nurse call buzzer system on D9 stopped working, the team started a project to install a new system, without any disruption to the ward.
The estates team as a whole work very hard 24/7 to minimise the impact of issues on Trust colleagues and on our patients and they are all extremely proud of Brad, Marco, John and Colin and how well they represented the estates department during the project.
This is reflected in the winning nomination; an extract of which told us:
“In February, the nurse call buzzer system on D9 stopped working. This left an acute, 33 bedded ward without any working buzzers, including the emergency buzzers.
Unfortunately the old system was beyond repair and a full refit would have meant emptying the ward for several weeks. Over the past 3 and a half months Bradley and the team supporting him (Marco, John and Colin) have worked tirelessly to install a wireless system.
We have not had to close a bed or move a patient and have been able to continue caring for our patients.
n the midst of the chaos, they remained friendly, courteous, patient and calm.
"Bradley has been imaginative in finding solutions to ensure the safety of our patients. In the NHS, we often praise and credit those on the frontline - the doctors, nurse, HCAs - but without a huge number of utterly dedicated support staff, we would be unable to care for our patients.
We now have a loud and fully functioning buzzer system (that can be made quieter at night!). Thank you all, so much.”