I was pleased to be nominated and to be a finalist in the Nurse of the Year category of the BJN Awards 2021.
I consider one of my greatest achievements to be my involvement in the setting up of the innovative Joint Specialist Thrombosis Nurse and Midwife Clinic at St George's Hospital in London, part of the St George's University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Venous thromboembolism (VTE)-related events kill more people a year than AIDS, breast cancer and road traffic accidents combined in England (Coombes, 2005). Women have an increased risk of thrombosis during pregnancy and for 6 weeks postpartum. This collaborative clinic promotes best clinical practice in venous thrombosis prevention in high-risk pregnant women. The project has been presented to the Department of Health, has been shared with other trusts and was acknowledged as the first combined nurse/midwife VTE clinic in the UK.
Together with a midwife colleague, I have also carried out an audit to find out patient compliance with thromboprophylaxis injections postnatally. The audit highlights that the joint clinic helps in the reduction of medication wastage and has increased awareness of thrombosis prevention among high-risk pregnant women.
Every year I organise campaigns, study days and teaching sessions for hospital and community staff, both at St George's Hospital and at Queen Mary's Hospital, Roehampton, to increase awareness of thrombosis prevention. Our work was rewarded in November 2015 when the Trust was acknowledged as one of the exemplar sites for thrombosis prevention. I have also attended the annual All Party Parliamentary Thrombosis Group meeting in the House of Commons since 2010.
I was nominated as the Trust's Nurse of the Year in celebration of its International Nurses in 2015. I also received the Trust's ‘Living our Values’ award, for exemplary members of staff, four times in 2015, 2017, 2018 and 2020.
In March 2018, I received another nomination for my key role in running the trust's VTE service and was nominated in the ‘Lives and Breathes the Trust Values’ category. In this nomination I was praised for my ‘hard work, dedication and kindness’, which made me very proud.
I was also shortlisted for a Rising Star Award in the Nursing Times Awards 2020. The Rising Star Award is for a nurse ‘who demonstrates exceptional qualities that embody the best of nursing and the leadership skills to inspire others to follow their example’.
In December, 2020 I was selected as one among thousands of Filipinos in Europe to take part in an article entitled ‘Juan in EU. Heroes amidst the pandemic’ in FACETS, a Filipino magazine. This was a collection of powerful and inspiring stories of Filipinos living and working in European countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. ‘Juan’ is Juan Dela Cruz, the national personification of the Philippines, an ‘Everyman’ figure.
I am also an ambassador for the nursing profession and visit schools with the aim of attracting young people to study nursing. I have enjoyed going to a local primary school and sharing my experience of being a nurse.
I am also a committee member of the Philippines Nurses Association UK (PNAUK), supporting the mission of the association in providing pastoral care and guidance to newly arrived Filipino nurses working in the NHS.
Nastly, during the first surge of COVID-19, I and my colleagues responded promptly to the pandemic by moving some of our clinics out of the hospital site to be run virtually or, for some patients, to clinically safer surroundings, to prevent the spread of infection among patients and staff.