Staff accolades

A housekeeper who is proactively trying to reduce waste and promote sustainability while also keeping her department clean and safe has been recognised by UHDB's Chief Executive, Stephen Posey, for her "innovative, proactive approach".

Linda Rowbottom's role involves speaking with patients, serving meals and keeping the Children's Emergency Department at Royal Derby Hospital clean and tidy but her passion for making a difference has been recognised by Stephen Posey, who has commended Linda's aims to cut costs and spend public money more wisely - a key priority for the Trust.

Delivering the Trust's financial plan and using our money efficiently to benefit our patients and communities is one of UHDB's 10 priorities for 2023 / 2024, aimed at helping us to deliver on improvements in safety, quality, effectiveness, and patient experience across the organisation.

Linda is already using her duties to help improve the department she works and is now actively engaging colleagues in the conversation about the importance of cutting costs and waste and improving sustainability.

She works with her management team to compare their current stock with cheaper, equally effective alternatives and after looking at the cost of laundering the sheets used on trolleys in comparison to paper sheets and liaising with infection control colleagues, the team decided to use paper roll instead in a bid to reduce laundering costs.

Linda said: "I am so passionate about this because I think every little helps and if we all just do one small thing to be more sustainable we can achieve great things.

"Take a look at the changes to linen I have implemented. We know that many patients only lie on a trolley for a short period of time which is a waste of a sheet, so we started offering a sheet to those who we knew would be on the trolley for a longer period of time.

"Since then, we have noticed a great deal of dirty linen reduction, which not only reduces cost but is also better for the staff collecting it and so far it has been a success."

Linda is also currently working on setting up a central stock location for the paediatrics department for items that are used less frequently but can only be ordered in large quantities. She also has an inventory for stock that has expired which is donated to the procurement team for training purposes.

Linda said a key part of making the department more sustainable is doing research and comparing costs. This has led to her being able to identify cheaper alternatives to items such as syringes and slings, with the quality of products always being maintained.

She said: "We looked at the syringes we used which included oral, enfits and luerlock syringes. The enfit syringes are much more cost effective so we now predominantly use this and keep a box of oral syringes for certain procedures rather than routinely buying them like we used to. We did a similar change for slings finding an alternative that was cheaper, less packaging, universally used and more colourful which the children seem to love, so that was another all-round positive."

Stephen Posey, Chief Executive at UHDB said: "Linda is displaying leadership values and behaviours that are helping to make real improvements in her area of work. She has taken an innovative, proactive approach around supplies that has seen a reduction in use and wastage, which is improving quality and cost and helping to spend public money wisely.

"Linda's forward-thinking leadership style is a model for others to learn from, and she is a credit to UHDB."

Lauren Cooper, Linda's manager said the team is very proud of Linda and she is always coming up with ideas to be less wasteful as an organisation.

Lauren said: "Linda is a phenomenal colleague and a joy to work with, so approachable and key to helping the Children's Emergency Department function seamlessly.

"She is so enthusiastic about being the change and everyone taking responsibility and playing a part in making improvements to the department. I am so pleased she has been recognised for her hard work, she really is making a difference."

Nominate a colleague for a Monthly Making a Difference Award

If you would like to nominate a colleague or team for a Monthly Making a Difference Award, please let us know.

There are four monthly Making a Difference Awards categories:

• Chief Executive Award – chosen by our CEO
• Patient Hero Award – nominated by patients
• Team UHDB Award – you can nominate your team or another team
• Excellent Employee Award – you can nominate your colleagues

You can send a 300 word nomination, along with the name of the team or individual, their job title and where they work, to: uhdb.employeeawards@nhs.net.