Daisies shine in the NHS

It’s not often that there are good news stories about the NHS. They’re particularly rare when the patient at the centre of the story dies. So I thought this one was worth sharing.

My mother, as you may know if you follow this blog, died on 11 July last year. That was the day she turned 94, and I remain impressed by her having lasted long enough to make the day of her death the same as the anniversary of her birth.

She spent the last eighteen days of her life on ward 7D, an Acute General Medicine ward, of the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. A great many people seem to delight in criticising the level of care provided by the NHS, either because they feel that the service hasn’t the resources it needs, or because they feel the staff and the system don’t focus enough on quality.

All I can say, based on those last eighteen days of my mother’s, is that the service is indeed horribly under-resourced, but in that hospital and on that ward I met a team of people who weren’t going to let any amount of stress prevent providing the best care they system would allow them to deliver. And that care was outstandingly good.

Doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals worked far harder than they should ever have to, in order to be as good as the patients deserved. They respected my mother’s wishes on treatment, and on what treatments she didn’t want; they protected her dignity; they kept her comfortable and at peace, and – as far as we could tell after she lost consciousness – free of pain.

Their professionalism was admirable, but they were far more than professional. They were respectful. They were concerned. And above all they were kind.

Before we left the hospital for the last time my wife, Danielle, pointed out to me that the hospital run a system for recognising outstanding nursing care, called the ‘Daisy Awards’. I would have liked to recognise others as well as the nurses, and there was no one in the nursing team I didn’t feel deserved the highest possible praise. But we couldn’t nominate everyone, so we nominated two.

Both, as it happened, were foreigners. That’s not to say there weren’t excellent English nurses in the department – there certainly were. However, it is a truth that can’t be repeated often enough, that the NHS depends on its foreign nurses to keep running. The anti-immigrant sentiments that fuelled Brexit, for instance, would wreck the very healthcare system on which everyone in Britain depends.

Liezel Ermitanio is from the Philippines, as are so many nurses in European hospitals.

Sara dos Santos Oliveira is, in our memory, from Spain but the name is Portuguese. Perhaps I should simply say she’s from Iberia. And she’s certainly one of those EU citizens being driven out is from Portugal, an EU citizen of the kind Brexiters want to stop coming to work in their country.

They both worked long hours, often staying on after the shifts ended. And, despite the pressure of their workload, they always found the time to talk to us if we had a question to ask. Just as they always found the time to help my mother whenever she needed anything.

So I put in my recommendations, one for each of them. And heard nothing.

Until, that is, three weeks ago. When I received an email from Professor Dickon Weir-Hughes who runs the Daisy Awards programme. It turned out that both Liezel and Sara had been honoured. I was delighted that they’d won the award. It seems that they were too.

Liezel and Sara with their awards

The ceremony was on 7 March, on the ward, with all their colleagues around, and in the presence of the Chief Nursing Officer, Sam Foster. It seems there were tears, but tears of pleasure must have been a welcome change from the stress of their work. All in all, it’s a good news story.

And, as Danielle pointed out, my mother would have been pleased that her nurses had won awards.

Sam Foster, Chief Nursing Officer, with our two nurses