Heartbeat: Difference makers honoured at Sandwell

December 8, 2021

The Star Awards weren’t the only accolades being dispensed at our organisation this year as two members of the Trust were honoured for their work around trying to make the NHS a better place.

Tying in with Black History Month, ‘Make A Difference’ awards are presented by both the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) and NHS organisations – a unique opportunity to recognise and reward nursing staff who support others and have made a real difference to patients and/or colleagues.

Sol Jeewa, Pastoral Lead, and Shakila Rasool, Practice Development Senior Sister were both recipients of the trophies in a small ceremony at Sandwell Hospital’s Education Centre on 20 October.

“Peers and colleagues nominated those who had really done some outstanding work in forwarding our push for equality, diversity and inclusion,” explained Director of Midwifery Helen Hurst, who hosted the award presentation.

Handing over to Cathy Brown, she presented the first award to Sol Jeewa.

“Sol, as our pastoral lead for our internationally recruited nurses has certainly had to hit the ground running given all that has occurred – and certainly wasn’t aware of all he would end up having to do. It’s been an extremely tricky balancing act, but a challenge Sol has risen to. He truly has made a difference and we couldn’t have done it without him.”

Group Director of Nursing Amber Markham presented the second award to Shakila Rasool and spoke of her role in helping the critical care team move forward from an incident.

“I was the one who nominated Shakila for this particular award. Why? Because she did something really brave: she helped stand up for what is right. She helped call out an incident of racism within critical care and supported all the junior nurses within the team, some of whom were worried about raising such a concern. As you know, speaking up is important to our Trust, Shakila supported them through the whole process right up to a hearing and she really champions or EDI agenda in critical care. She has been phenomenal.”