Caroline's Blog

I've had the good fortune and privilege to meet many famous people in this job.

Royals, Prime Ministers and household names from the world of entertainment, business and sport.

Its always an honour, but inevitably, as time has gone on I have become less excited and awestruck by it all.

But that will all change next Tuesday.

Julie Walters.

Need I say more?

Except, 'award-winning', 'multi- talented' and 'one of Britain’s best-loved actresses'. 

Julie Walters is kindly supporting us at our charity event in London on 31st August.

The special 'Audience with Julie Walters' evening is to further raise our profile in the capital with established and potential supporters.

BBC Radio 4's Jenni Murray - a former patient, supporter and also good friend - will be there to lead the questions and chat to Julie.

With 26% of our patients coming from outside Greater Manchester and Cheshire and our research helping to save lives across the UK and beyond, its important to promote our charity on a national level.

It'll be great to have the opportunity to chat to all our special guests at the event.

And I won't worry about any 'awestruck' moments.

Julie Walters! Need I say more ?

That’s a mantra I’ve always stuck by and one that I make sure my children believe.

And watching the news this week, it was a joy to see that same belief on the faces of all the A-level students receiving their results.

They’re moving onto their next chapter in life, they’re about to face new challenges and make new memories.  Many of those may well be going off to university to study medicine or nursing – an extremely rewarding route that you never know might lead them to The Christie in the future.

Education is such an important thing and in September we will be opening a Christie School of Oncology to train the doctors and nurses of tomorrow.  In line with our core mission statement of ‘We Care, We Discover, We Teach,’ we already offer education on all aspects of cancer here at The Christie, but our School of Oncology will really build on that.  It will offer the highest quality of education for people within our organisation already, across the cancer network and throughout the country.  Our staff have such a wealth of expertise and by sharing skills, we can together work to provide better and more effective care for our patients. 

We should never stop wanting to learn, improve or find better ways of doing things. 

Aim for the top and strive for the very best for yourself and others.

I couldn’t believe the weather yesterday, what a wet August it’s turned out to be.
 
We’re hardy bunch in Manchester and we don’t let the wet weather get us down.  Although it’s a challenge for any mum as I know - with children on school holidays. What’s happened to those entire lovely long summer August days?

Even though August has been a bit of a wash out, I’m really looking forward to September.  We’ve got our annual members meeting coming up on the 9th September – it’s always a real opportunity to meet our members and showcase the excellent progress we’ve made for the good of our patients. 

We’ve got a whole host of charity events coming up next month as well – from the Great North Swim and Run, to the Walk of Hope at Tatton Park.  The walk is always such a moving and inspirational event where family and friends gather in support of loved ones currently battling cancer, and in celebration of those who have beaten the disease and in memory of those who have sadly lost the fight.  This year we are being joined by a number of Coronation Street stars who want to show their support for us. Coronation Street is a national institution and their cast are brilliant in supporting us with all our activities to deliver the best care nationally and internationally.

We’ve also just had our annual review delivered and I’m really pleased with how its turned out.  This year we wanted to feature ‘real stories told by real people’ to help give an account of the last year at The Christie and highlight how our hospital has touched so many people and is supported by key organisations across Manchester.  One in particular is the premier league referee Mark Halsey who has been a patient here over the past year.  In the review he talks about how our staff “couldn’t do enough” for him and how they’re “top, top people who do a brilliant job.”

I’m thrilled we’ve been able to help him and bring him to full recovery.  And this weekend he’s back to where he belongs – he’ll be refereeing his first premier league match since beating cancer.  So at 3pm when Wigan meet Blackburn I’ll be cheering Mark on as its great to see him back.

There's so much in the news about rising unemployment, 120 graduates chasing every new job and people recently made redundant despairing about the chances of securing another job.

And then we have a critical national shortage of theatre nurses.

Instead of people beating down our door to work here, we are having to go that extra mile to recruit from this scarce pool.

Every hospital is finding it hard to recruit in this area, so we need to go beyond a job advert. We know we have unique selling points and we need to promote these. From our acclaimed specialist surgery to training and development opportunities.

That's why we're having a recruitment open day on Saturday 4th September from 10am to 2pm.

Anyone interested in seeing what opportunities there are in our theatres is invited. People can even bring their CVs for interviews on the day.

If you know a theatre nurse please let them know about this.

It may be a funny old world, but we are always very serious when it comes to recruitment.

I’ve always fancied being Davina McCall on Streetmate or any TV presenter who gets to completely surprise someone with a heart-warming announcement. 

And for just a short moment this afternoon I got that chance (sort of…) and it was wonderful. 

Tara Minshall a housekeeper on ward 12 was the first winner of our ‘employee of the month’ scheme – and in front of her proud colleagues I turned up on the ward to surprise her with the announcement. 

She was shocked and delighted. 

A humble and modest winner who was nominated by her work mates for always putting patients first and constantly going ‘above-and-beyond’. 

We have a big staff awards ceremony every year, but it’s important that we recognise the outstanding work of staff on an ongoing basis. 

They are the jewels in our crown.  And what makes this place so very special. 

Tara beat over 100 nominations to be this first month’s winner. A popular and worthy star. 

It was great seeing the smile on her face.  Just as well I wasn’t Davina with a huge camera crew in tow.