Chief Nursing Officer Awards for three Royal Berkshire nurses

Three nurses from the Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust in Reading have received coveted awards from NHS England’s Chief Nursing Officer Ruth May.

Ruth May presented the prestigious Chief Nursing Officer awards during her visit to Reading’s Royal Berkshire Hospital today.

The Chief Nursing Officer awards were introduced in 2019 to recognise the value of nurses and midwives.

Dr Mandy Odell, Nurse Consultant for Critical Care received a gold award for her outstanding work on numerous improvement and research projects during her long career. Mandy is an internationally recognised leader, speaker and ambassador. She continues to work at the Trust after her retirement leading the Hospital Out of Hours Transformation project.

On presenting Mandy’s gold Chief Nursing Officer award, Ruth May said: “The prestigious CNO gold awards are only awarded to nurses who’ve given outstanding service, and made a real, lasting change.”

Emer Diego, Practice Development Nurse received a silver award for supporting hundreds of overseas nurses at the Trust. Originally from the Philippines, Emer’s leadership, innovation and caring manner is regularly cited by his colleagues. Since joining the Trust’s practice development team 2 years ago, Emer has been at the forefront of transforming our hospital to a more diverse organisation, representative of the community we serve.

Simon Wells, Lead Nurse Infection Prevention & Control received his silver award for working tirelessly throughout the extraordinary challenge of the Covid 19 pandemic ensuring patient and staff safety. Throughout and outside of Covid-19, Simon worked above and beyond to keep abreast of the latest intelligence, analyse data, and advise and support his colleagues.

Eamonn Sullivan MBE, Chief Nurse Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust said: “I’m enormously proud of our three award winners today and delighted that their outstanding contributions to caring for the people in our community, have been recognised. Each of the winners work in very different fields and reflect the diverse range of responsibilities within the nursing profession”.