Celebration of service awards

Celebration of service awards for KGH and NGH staff who have served their communities for a combined total of 6,315 years

The University Hospitals of Northamptonshire has celebrated the amazing contributions of long-serving colleagues who have dedicated their lives to serving their local communities.

A total of 214 staff eligible for long service awards (colleagues with more than 25 years of service) have together served at Kettering or Northampton general hospitals for a combined total of 6,315 years.

Our celebration of service awards and afternoon tea events were held on September 15 for NGH staff at the Cripps Centre and on September 19 for KGH staff at the hospital’s recreation hall.

Two members of staff at NGH have served for 50 years or more and two at NGH and two KGH have served for 45 years. Other staff include 17 celebrating 40 years and 181 celebrating 25 years or more.

The University Hospitals of Northamptonshire Chief Executive, Laura Churchward, said: “It was a great pleasure to be able to honour the many years of service our colleagues have dedicated to Northampton and Kettering General Hospitals, and to the NHS.

“Each and every colleague makes a difference to the care and services we provide in our hospitals and it is very important for us to remind our communities that we have staff members who literally dedicate their lives to healthcare.

“We are proud and delighted to have been able to, once again, give out so many long service awards to our amazing colleagues.”

What our longest serving colleagues at NGH say….

UHN’s longest serving colleague is Elizabeth Summers, Lead Cancer Nurse at Northampton General Hospital, who has celebrated 51 years of continuous service.

Elizabeth began her NHS journey in 1974 at the age of 16 as a pre-nursing student at Northampton General Hospital with a family legacy of nursing.

She has devoted her entire career to NGH except for a brief stint at the Royal Marsden for specialist cancer training.

Elizabeth has witnessed firsthand the transformation of hospital care over the decades and says she recognises the importance of holding patients at the heart of what we do and giving them agency in the care that they receive.

She said: “One of the greatest changes that we have seen is that we advocate for patients and we listen to them.

“There’s nothing like the feeling of making a difference. Whether it’s easing someone’s pain or just being there to listen, it’s what gets you out of bed in the morning.”

Over the years Elizabeth has been instrumental in helping to develop NGH as a cancer centre with a specialist oncology ward, teams of specialist nurses and allied health professionals, along with the development of end of life and palliative care teams.

In July 2023 Elizabeth became the first member of NGH staff ever to win the Chief Nursing Officer for England Gold Award for her outstanding services to cancer care and was presented with it by the Chief Nurse herself, Dame Ruth May.

And she has also worked for the last 12 years to help support the development of a Maggie's Cancer Centre due to open soon on the Northampton General Hospital site.

Staff Nurse Mandy Lovell joined Northampton General Hospital at the age of 16 as a pre-nursing student and has served 50 years of continuous service.

She started out in what was then called George and Elizabeth Ward which became the hospital’s first dedicated elderly care ward. Since then she has worked in many wards including Compton, Rowan and Allebone.

She said: “A lot has changed over the last 50 years. The hospital was much smaller when I arrived and based around the Billing Road entrance. Since then there has been a huge expansion of what I call the new hospital.

“Another big change has been the way nurses are trained. It used to be nursing students who worked on the wards and learned on the job. Now it is more classroom based in universities so is somewhat more detached.

“Technology has also been a big change. The advent of CT and MRI means doctors don’t have to rely so much on physical examination and a certain amount of guesswork anymore.”

Mandy, now 66, plans to retire after being presented with her 50 years of service.

What our longest serving colleagues at KGH say….

Maureen Lavin started her 45-year journey at the Trust in the maternity department at KGH in April 1979 as a weekend ward clerk.

Two years later she moved to Corby Diagnostic Centre working part time while her two children grew up. And then she went full time until her retirement in 2019, but then immediately carried on as a clerical administrator at Corby Outpatients Centre.

She said: “Things have changed a lot in administration over the last 45 years. When I started everything was hand-written on appointment cards which were then stamped with a franking machine. We kept the records in big red ledgers before the move to computerisation.

“Now everything is on the computer and we have gone paperless. I love the job because I am a people person and it is nice to support customers in the hospital environment rather than working in industry.”

David Knight has been a biomedical scientist specialising in haematology at Kettering General Hospital for the last 45 years.

But the 80-year-old, from Kettering, has been in the job itself for even longer than that. He started in Plymouth hospitals in 1965 and after 12 years went to work in a hospital in Saudi Arabia for two years.

He joined KGH on March 13, 1979, and has worked here ever since, although he is now doing two days a week.

He said: “Science is a subject I have always been interested in and I like to keep up with the changes. The discipline of haematology is the study of blood disorders and I find this fascinating. I have been lucky to work with some very good colleagues and I love the comradery of continuing to work.”

The Celebration of Service awards commemorate continuous long service milestones in the NHS between 25 and 60 years. They are just one way in which colleagues are valued and celebrated at Northampton and Kettering General Hospitals.

At the afternoon tea events, colleagues were given mementos to commemorate their service milestones.