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Here is the text of the speech given at the Patient Experience Network Awards for 2020
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Good afternoon. To be here with you today, even virtually, is a great honour. Opportunities like this, to celebrate the best and imagine the possible, are precious.
In a moment or two, I will tell you all about the Fiona Littledale Award, and the remarkable woman who inspired it. Before that, though, I want to share a couple of insights on Patient Experience, neither from in the bed nor over it, but beside it. For almost 10 years, I accompanied Fiona as best friend, husband and carer through the experience of oncology treatment. The things I share now are no more than glimpses gained from that time. Some of them are more serious than others.
that tea is bad, tea & biscuits are worse
that professionalism and warmth are companions, not opposites
that ‘being in the way’ of staff is all about attitude and not about location
that creative ways of thanks are palliative care for the heart
that sorrow can be a stimulant, not a suppressant, and has stimulated me to publish lists of 69, 70 & 71 thank-yous on every NHS Birthday, bake birthday cakes for my local hospital and GP surgery and publish a free resource on bereavement for all NHS staff.
that we need the NHS more than we know and value it less than we should
that 1.4 million can be represented by 1, for good or ill
That discouragement is a pandemic to which we all have the cure
My wife, Fiona Littledale, after whom this award is named, spent all her working life as an information manager. The last ten years were as the Faculty Liaison Librarian to the Medical School of St George’s. She loved her job, and often got a real boost when she later found herself under the care of one of her students whilst undergoing treatment. She loved her job so much that she kept working all through 24 rounds of chemo, whenever her strength would allow. It is a measure of how much she loved it that one of the hardest days during the last year of her life was the one on which she had to leave it because she was simply too ill to go on.
For Fiona, the jewel in that job which she loved so much was to invest time in those who were already working, but who wanted to improve their skill set and deliver still better care to their patients. She would go out of her way, often at great cost to herself, to help them pursue those studies by accessing relevant, up-to-date, peer-reviewed information. To see one of them fly, equipped and motivated to do so – gave a lift in a life which was increasingly weighed down by cancer.
When you lose the person you love, there are many ways to remember them – and I have run the gamut of most of them. My family and I were under strict instructions that we were not to commemorate her with a bench, since she ‘did not wanting people sitting on me’. Taking that to heart, we decided to remember Fiona with an ongoing legacy which would encourage the pursuit of excellence which she held so dear. Each year, the Fiona Littledale Award will recognise outstanding excellence in oncology nursing in a way which she would have loved.
Before the award is announced, a quick word about the sunflower, which forms the logo of the award, and will be worn on a badge by the winner. Sunflowers are tall, proud, beautiful and they make your heart sing. They are adaptable too, following the sun wherever it may be. At her memorial service, Fiona chose a poem called 'that will be heaven' by Evangeline Paterson with this line in it:” to stand like the sunflower, turned full face to the sun”
I hope that the winner, and indeed all of you, will stand tall.
