Outstanding Achievement Awards

Rising Star Award — recognises an exceptional student, trainee, apprentice or someone in a development role (clinical or non-clinical).  

Your 2025 Rising Star award winner: Chantelle Burger

Shortlisted for her exceptional growth, professionalism, and significant impact within the Sterile Services Department, Chantelle rapidly qualified as a Sterile Services Manager in half the expected time, demonstrating remarkable commitment and aptitude for quality management. Her pivotal contribution was evident during her first unannounced external audit by the BSI, where she calmly and professionally managed the department's quality systems, audits, and documentation, leading to a successful audit pass with flying colours and highlighting her exemplary attention to detail.

Your 2025 shortlisted Rising Stars:

Junaid Anvar (ED Registrar)

Dr. Anvar has been shortlisted for the Rising Star award for his exceptional dedication and compassionate leadership within the Emergency Department, demonstrating his fantastic contributions and amazing potential. As a senior middle-grade doctor, he actively pursues personal growth, while prioritising the development and well-being of his colleagues through teaching and advocacy. His proactive approach to fostering a supportive environment and his thoughtful gestures which boost morale, position him as "an inspirational and influential figure in Emergency Medicine, both locally and nationally".

Rachel Heyes (GP Trainee)

Dr Heyes is an excellent and caring doctor who embodies Trust values and shows great potential. During her Obstetrics and Gynaecology rotation, she made a significant positive impact on colleagues and patients through her kind gestures, polite bedside manner, and willingness to help multidisciplinary team members. Her outstanding attitude towards career progression, collaborative team spirit, and positive approach to daily activities make her a responsible and caring professional with the clear potential to be an excellent GP.

Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to Healthcare Award - Some people go above and beyond, without seeking reward or recognition by dedicating decades of their life to healthcare. 

We want to hear about the people tirelessly working away with great dedication for forty years or more at the trust – providing a role model to those around them and making outstanding contributions that make a difference to the care of individuals and the wider healthcare sector. 

Your 2025 winner of the Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to Healthcare award is: Rosie Collcott

Rosie has been shortlisted for her over 40 years of outstanding dedication and compassionate service to the NHS , starting as a cadet nurse in the 1970s . Her true passion for nursing blossomed at the Robert Horrell Day Centre, where she supported cancer and palliative care patients, later leading the lymphoedema service . She loved the service so much she even chose its chapel for her own wedding! Rosie expanded services with outreach clinics and a patient support group, actively promoting education to enhance patient experience and outcomes.

Your 2025 shortlisted Outstanding Lifetime Contributors to Healthcare:

Mary Ninkovic (Gastroenterology Consultant)

Mary is nominated for her outstanding, continued dedication to the hepatology service, even after retirement. As lead clinician and driving force behind the successful national HCC Surveillance project, she's helped our Trust become a top performer in identifying at-risk patients and significantly improving screening uptake. Mary is a respected patient advocate, and her nomination details examples of her consistently going above and beyond to support patients and educate staff, demonstrating admirable commitment and impact on the service's development.

Paul Newman (Senior MRI Radiographer)

Paul is nominated for his 22 years of dedicated service to our MRI department, consistently providing exceptionally caring and patient-focused support. As a respected senior team member, his outstanding decision-making and leadership have significantly benefited the service, with colleagues frequently seeking his guidance. Paul's warm, respectful communication and proactive approach have led to significant improvements in patient care and service development, demonstrating unwavering commitment, leadership, and compassionate care.

Volunteer of the Year Award - This award celebrates the contribution made by volunteers who give their time freely to support our hospitals.  

Volunteers are crucial to the NHS’s vision for the future of health and social care, as partners with skilled staff, not as substitutes for them. Our volunteers aim to brighten the lives of not only patients and services users, but also staff.  

Your 2025 Volunteer of the Year: Kathryn Hutchinson

Kathryn was nominated and shortlisted for Volunteer of the Year for her exceptional, compassionate support in the Emergency Department at Peterborough City Hospital. Her nomination listed several touching examples of consistently going above and beyond, providing calm and reassuring help to patients and families during highly stressful moments . Her dedication is evident in over 1,130 hours contributed, including personally meeting over 4,000 patients at the ED front doors in the last year and serving over 700 hydration drinks to patients .

Your 2025 shortlisted Volunteers:

Chris Young

Chris Young was shortlisted for exemplifying the Trust's values through his outstanding dedication, consistently delivering superb care to patients . Despite managing his own health issues as a wheelchair user, Chris volunteers 4-5 times a week, primarily with the Pat Dog service . He actively seeks out staff and patients who would benefit from a visit from the dogs, bringing kindness, a friendly smile, and infectious enthusiasm that truly puts patients first.

Jonah Karungu

Jonah has been shortlisted for his exceptional compassion and dedication as a volunteer, contributing over 300 hours since March 2024. Motivated by his own patient experience, he consistently provides warmth, comfort, and practical support to patients on the Oncology Day Treatment Unit and Ward B5. His nomination praised h is gentle presence and kindness, which is often mentioned.  One patient highlighted how his exemplary care "made things feel a little less horrible" during a difficult time.

Outstanding Care and Compassion Award - recognises a team or individual who exceeds expectations, supporting patient access to excellent and compassionate care from our services, and who builds relationships of trust with colleagues and/or patients.  

Your 2025 Outstanding Care and Compassionate Award winner: Laura Larham

In November 2024, a patient sadly passed away with no known next of kin. Initial investigations into their background revealed possible birth records, but discrepancies in the date of birth made confirmation difficult. Undeterred, Laura collaborated closely with a genealogist, who eventually identified a potential relative. Feedback from the family: “We thank you for all the care given to [patient] and the work involved in finding us and organising the DNA testing. We are amazed by the efforts involved and the respect shown for [patient’s] life.” 

Meet your 2025 shortlist for the Outstanding Care and Compassion Award: 

Danny Brown, Clinical Site Matron

Danny was the first clinician on scene at a terrible incident at HH in March 2025. Here is a quote from a member of staff about Danny's actions at the scene. 

“I wanted to thank you for being the person taking control and guiding us all through that awful situation. Not only did your experience and skill show in those moments, but so did your humanity. I can't thank you enough for helping me personally through those initial stages and will always remember how you acted. I hope you're dealing with it as well as can be possible and are able to get some deserved rest. Thank you again.” 

Sindy Treadaway, Haematology Support Worker

There have been many times Sindy has noticed something "not quite right" with a patient and on one particular occasion she flagged a patient as she was concerned something wasn't quite right with him. She sees him regularly and when observations were taken the patient was escalated to the Dr who did their routine checks and it turns out he was having a cardiac event and ended up having surgery in Papworth. This is not the only occasion this type of situation has occurred. She knows her patients well and is not afraid to advocate for them if she feels something is wrong. 

Future Impact Award - This award recognises the achievements of an individual or team who has implemented sustainable improvements within their area of work. 

Your 2025 winners of the Future Impact Award: Ophthalmology Team

The Ophthalmology team carried out a tree planting event in winter 2024 and created a little copse which they playfully named the 'Eye Patch'. This event raised awareness within the Trust of the benefits of tree planting for the climate. The team has phased out antibiotic eye drops for patients to take home after cataract surgery which has saved the Trust £14,500 and an estimated 8.3tCO2e. The treatment provided during cataract surgery is so advanced there is no longer a requirement to for home use antibiotic eye drops. 

Meet your 2025 shortlist for the Future Impact Award: 

Anaesthetics Sustainability Team

The Anaesthetics Sustainability Team has implemented transformative sustainability initiatives that demonstrate environmental stewardship within PCH.  
The department has implemented several collective initiatives including split bin recycling systems, exploration of reusable theatre gowns and caps with embroidered name and roles to address human factors, and a theatre power-down initiative to reduce overnight energy consumption.

Lauren-Jayne Randall, Apprentice Health Scientist

Some inhalers use a gas, known as propellants, to create a puff of medicine, which is then inhaled by the person using them. These types of inhalers are called pressurised metered dose inhalers (pMDIs). The propellants in pMDIs are powerful greenhouse gases and are thousands of times more powerful than carbon dioxide. They are safe to the person using them, but contribute to climate change. pMDIs make up 70% of inhalers prescribed in the UK, causing 3% of the NHS’s overall carbon emissions. This makes them the single largest contributor to the NHS’s carbon emissions of any medicine. Lauren-Jayne identified that one of the main issues around pMDIs is patients not using the correct technique which causes the release of more gas than required. To support patients, Lauren-Jayne organised and ran a patient education day for inhaler technique within the main atrium at Peterborough City Hospital which was joined by staff from AstraZeneca.  

Quality Improvement Award - This award recognises an outstanding commitment to quality improvement and innovation, that has resulted in measurable benefits for our patients, service users and/or staff. 

Your 2025 winner of the Quality Improvement Award: Nicola Dawson, Miah Farrell and Holly Westwood

Funding from NHS England, secured by Nicola Dawson, allowed Holly and Miah to be employed firstly on a temporary contract but now permanently by the trust. The funding was to improve technology uptake in diabetes in diverse and deprived areas. They have doubled the uptake in CGM and pumps in this population. Of our 400 patient 76% of patients are now on a hybrid closed loop systems and 93.5% are using CGM. 

Meet your 2025 shortlist for the Quality Improvement Award: 

ENT Team

The problem that needed solving is a national one, whereby patients are referred as a suspect cancer case but do not have the correct red flag symptoms, or in some cases are not appropriate on a cancer pathway at all. This meant patients with red flag symptoms were waiting up to 6 weeks for their first appointment. The ENT team implemented a consultant led triage. Consultants agreed a SOP for the team to triage using red flag symptoms and looking at patients’ medical history. This meant that the only appropriate patients were booked into one stop neck lump clinics, there for ring fencing that capacity for patients who really needed it for receiving a timely diagnosis of cancer or being removed from cancer pathway. 

Microbiology Laboratory Team

The Microbiology laboratory team have been working to reduce the number of heavy mixed growth (HMG) results being seen in the urine screens. HMG is where several different species of bacteria have grown upon culturing the sample and it is not possible to determine which, if any, are clinically significant. The department and maternity teams had been monitoring the number of HMG results being produced in the antenatal cohort of patients as urinary tract infections in pregnant women can be very serious and cause significant complications, even leading to miscarriage in some cases. The use of boric acid collection tubes was implemented in February 2025. Subsequently the maternity team have identified a reduction in HMG results from 60- 70% of individuals to 8% within their antenatal cohort.  

Partnership Award – recognises the team or individual working collaboratively with external partners to improve services.  

Your 2025 winner of the Partnership Award: The High Impact Use Service

The High Impact Use (HIU) Service is an innovative, approachable and collaborative service across NWAngliaFT, the ICB, social care, council and other external partners. It has a total focus on the patient and working with them to avoid frequent attendances at our Emergency Departments and other urgent and emergency care services. Patients who frequently attend the Emergency Department (or other acute services) can be referred in to the HIU team. With the patient’s permission, the team then assess the needs of the patient and work with them to literally change their lives. In the short space of time, the HIU Service has changed the lives for the better of many patients, which, in turn, has reduced (or in some cases) completely stopped their frequent attendance in our Emergency Departments. There are currently 29 patients under the care of the Service (19 at PCH and 10 at HH). 

Meet your 2025 shortlist for the Partnership Award: 

Amber O'Berg, Integrated Neighbourhood Programme Manager & Dr Abby Richardson, Integrated Neighbourhood Clinical Lead

Both Amber and Abby work in the North Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Care Partnership, who are a partnership that brings together health and social care services across Peterborough, Fenland and Huntingdonshire, to provide an integrated health and care system fit for the future. Both Amber and Abby are hosted in this partnership within our Trust. It is for their part in the fantastic Cervical Screening Project that has led to their nomination. Amber and Abby have been critical in delivering additional outreach clinics, delivered by Greater Peterborough Network (GPN), these were commissioned by Abby and Amber, with over 300 appointments booked, 236 appointments finished with 187 smears completed to date, with an average patient recommend score of 4.6 and patient experience score of 4.3 overall out of 5. 

Early Pregnancy Unit — Complex Abortion Team

The Complex Abortion Team have been in existence for just over a year. They have already made a difference to hundreds of women with complex health needs who require an abortion, both locally and around the whole of East Anglia. This has meant that 94% of women have accessed an abortion within the region and often in their local hospital. This is an increase from 60% prior to the team being in existence. This is an amazing achievement in such a short space of time. By working collaboratively with hospitals around the region, along with NHS England this team has made huge strides in streamlining and improving services. 

Your 2025 Team of the Year: Cellular Pathology

Your 2025 shortlisted Teams of the Year:

Holly Ward

Holly Ward was shortlisted for their high quality and dynamic care, exceptional courage, and resilience in managing a young, highly complex and high-risk patient. This required staff to be constantly evaluating situations, thinking and acting quickly, planning ahead to consider potential dangers and mitigating these before they came to fruition. The team did all of this, despite there being a high risk of harm to themselves and whilst relocating an entire unit within the ward to ensure patient safety while maintaining seamless operations and patient flow for others. They also delivered outstanding care and compassion to this patient, their family and the additional external staff who were also involved in this patients care. The team showed incredible resilience, courage and bravery for this prolonged period. They pulled together as a team, regularly debriefing together after particularly challenging days and leaning on each other for support.

NICU Peterborough

The Peterborough NICU team has been shortlisted for the Outstanding Team of the Year Award due to their exceptional commitment to continuous improvements, despite managing an unprecedented number of complex and poorly babies. They achieved Silver BLISS and Stage 3 UNICEF accreditation (a first in the East of England), introduced innovative roles like a neonatal nurse specialist counsellor, and launched initiatives such as the "Snuggle & Read" project, which even made it onto ITV news. They were a runner up team of the year at the East of England Perinatal Conference, and were identified as outstanding in the audit measure of normal temperature on  admission by NNAP. Furthermore, they excel in staff development through a "grow your own" culture and consistently meet quality objectives, like achieving outstanding normal temperature on admission audit results.

Outstanding Individual of the Year Award – recognises an individual whose skills and actions have helped the Trust exceed quality objectives for the continuous improvement of patient outcomes, experience, safety or staff wellbeing, and who goes above and beyond, and delivers excellence within their role.  

Your 2025 Individual of the Year: Charlotte Chapman-Hart 

Charlotte has been shortlisted for the Outstanding Individual of the Year award due to her exceptional ability to foster collaboration and drive meaningful change. She was instrumental in bridging communication gaps between the medical technology team and the HHRP new hospital program, ensuring seamless progress. Additionally, Charlotte demonstrated leadership by championing rare disease awareness across the Trust.

Your 2025 shortlisted Individuals of the Year:

Gill Harris (Consultant Midwife)

Gill has been shortlisted for her exceptional kindness, caring nature, and unwavering support for both service users and colleagues. She consistently goes above and beyond, as exemplified by her off-duty assistance at an early morning home birth to support worried community midwives, ensuring a positive outcome for the patient. Gill is also recognized for her leadership, readily sharing her extensive knowledge and actively mentoring staff to advance their careers, all while managing an expanding workload.

Natalie Styles-Hudson (Senior Site Manager)

Natalie was shortlisted for her exceptional dedication to the Giving Tree Appeal, which she founded in 2016 to provide Christmas gifts for children facing hardship. Driven by her compassion for local communities, Natalie has expanded the appeal significantly, personally organising collections, wrapping events, and even using her own funds and home to store donations. Her efforts also extend to supporting Trust staff facing financial challenges, demonstrating her tireless commitment to bringing joy and making a tangible difference in people's lives year-round, all while managing her demanding role within the Trust.

Health Hero Award - this award is nominated by the public for a person or team who have demonstrated high-quality clinical care and/or compassion or kindness to our patients and their loved ones, or to the public generally. The award is open to non-clinical or administrative staff if they have provided great care or support.  

Your 2025 Health Hero winner: Annie Kavanagh, Upper Gastrointestinal Specialist: 

Annie was nominated with the most heart-warming feedback: "Annie is quite literally an angel! For the time my father-in-law was ill, she was a shining light. She was helpful, informative, kind, caring, dedicated and professional. She helped us through the darkest of times, with a smile."

The nominator continued to praise Annie for explaining everything clearly, honestly, and with compassion, making the family feel included and empowered in their loved one's care. Annie's care and compassion stretched to the whole family, truly making her a health hero. Thank you, Annie, for your extraordinary kindness and dedication!

Your 2025 Health Hero Shortlist: 

Annie Kavanagh, Upper Gastrointestinal Specialist

Here is a quote from Annie's nomination: 

"Annie is quite literally an angel! For the time my father-in-law was ill, she was a shining light. She was helpful, informative, kind, caring, dedicated and professional. She helped us through the darkest of times, with a smile. She explained everything clearly, honestly and with compassion. I really appreciated the honesty at a time when our lives were upside down, and at the heart of everything my father-in-law’s needs were first and foremost. Annie made us feel included and empowered in his care. Her care and compassion stretched to the whole family."  

Lacamioara Tureatca, Staff Nurse Ward A4

Here is a quote from Lacamioara's nomination: 

"To be compassionate is one thing, but to deliver compassion daily, year after year, and be remembered every time I tell my story is remarkable. I can only hope you receive the recognition you deserve. I can't thank you enough for being my protector, offering me hope, and allowing me to rest so I could recover. Thank you for being part of my journey, experience, and recovery. I want you to know I will never forget you. Please know you are part of the puzzle that makes the difference!" 

Dr Rabia Zill-e-Huma, Consultant Obstetrician, Maternal Medicine Specialist, Obstetric Research Lead

Here is a quote from Dr Rabia's nomination:

"One of the most stand out moments in my care by Dr Rabia was when she promised to come and see me during a day that she was not officially working in the hospital. She was in the hospital for training purposes but gave up her own time during this day to visit Lilac Ward and assess the progress of the wound. This not only demonstrated Dr Rabia's compassion and care, but also the time and respect she gave to me during the most terrifying time of my life so far. "