The Coronavirus challenge is bigger than anything most of us will have faced in our working lives. But the bigger the challenge, the greater are the heroes and heroines who rise to it.
We are proud at Combined Healthcare of the values of compassion and teamwork that drive what we do and who we are. We want everyone who works for us and with us to have the opportunity to show solidarity, appreciation and gratitude for each other – for the things we do, for the extra mile we go, for the compassion we show.
We know that everyone is united in this challenge. Frontline staff and support staff. Staff working on our wards and people working throughout our community teams. Permanent staff and bank. Service users, carers and volunteers. We are ALL in this together and we want to highlight, support and recognise everyone
How to search through the messages and tributes
Over the coming days and weeks we are publishing what we see, to build a lasting tribute and record of the extraordinary things we are doing and all we are going to do.
You can use the search engine below to look through all of the messages and tributes we have received.
You can search and filter or rank by any combination of:
* any word or phrase in the tribute title;
* the tribute type;
* the name of the Combined Healthcare team nominated;
* the name of another organisation and/or external team nominated;
* the name of the nominator.
If you wish to clear your search, simply click the “Clear” link.
If you wish to read the full details of any message or tribute in the list, click on the entry”s purple title, which also acts as a link.
Search the Hall of Fame
The Incident Management Group
When Covid-19 first hit us, way back in March 2020, we could not possibly have known the challenges we would face, the hurdles we would have to overcome, or the range and breadth of activities and outcomes we would have to deliver.
Equally, I could not have anticipated the sheer degree of professionalism, ingenuity, teamwork, mutual respect, pragmatism, determination, support and recognition that this quite remarkable group would go on to develop and show each other and the wider Trust and system - individually and collectively.
Before submitting this tribute, I went back to the very first COVID Update we put out - on 11th March 2020. In there, the IMG Group told the staff " We have created this newsletter to keep everyone up to date with the latest situation and advice. It will not replace specialist advice or instructions that may come down the line management chain to individual teams. Nor will it replace any urgent communications we may need to issue from time to time if particular circumstances arise. Instead, it is designed to provide you with general advice, updates and guidance, so we can all support each other and our local health and care colleagues through this challenging time."
9 months later - after nearly 40 MS Teams meetings, over 32 Covid Updates and CEO Blogs, countless videos, tweets, Facebook and LinkedIn posts, tons of guidance, advice and SOPs, development of web pages and digital apps, a huge amount of HR and wellbeing support materials and advice - I think this group can hold its head up high and say it has delivered everything it promised the staff and its senior management - and then some.
This team encompasses and brings together every area of Trust activity - clinical and corporate, frontline care and back office support and operations, management, HR, OD, Comms, IPC, finance, workforce, estates, logistics, pharmacy, facilities management, IT and digital, all directorates including Primary Care.
This team has worked under enormous pressure and had to combine attention to detail and adherence to corporate and clinical rules and standards with the need sometimes to innovate and fly by the seat of their pants in real time. Despite this (or maybe even because of it) I cannot remember a single occasion when there has been the slightest degree of lack of respect, negativity, fear or failure to step up to the plate.
The team has done this because every single individual on it - by instinct and their own personal values - has demonstrated compassion, approachability, responsibility and excellence every single time they have come together and in everything they have done - in the most challenging of circumstances.
In easy times, Trust values can simply be a 'nice to have' ornament. In difficult times, they are the bedrock on which success is achieved and outcomes delivered.
For this reason, I believe the IMG Group deserves to be included in Combined United - on behalf of every member of staff who has been represented on it.
In a famous soliloquy, Shakespeare's Henry V talks of how his comrades "will remember with advantages what feats he did that day...We few, we happy few, we band of brothers...gentlemen in England now a-bed shall think themselves accursed they were not here."
In regards to how the NHS overall, Combined Healthcare generally - and this fantastic Team in particular - rose together to the Covid-19 crisis, we will not need to embellish a single thing, nor remember "with advantages".
But we will be able, for the rest of our lives, look back with pride and mutual admiration on how this brilliant group of colleagues collectively helped each other and their wider colleagues to make history.
Combined Healthcare - Trust wide
Great Teamwork
Joe Mccrea
Associate Director of Communications