Publish date: 16 June 2023
Triple success for Northumbria Healthcare at international awards scheme
Teams from Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust emerged victorious with a trio of awards from the 2023 International CSR Excellence Awards.
The trust, which formalised its commitment to corporate social responsibility (CSR) through its Community Promise, launched in 2021, was delighted at its return from the event at St Paul's Cathedral in London, on Friday, June 16.
There was a gold in the Initiatives category for the mini scrubs project, which aims to open up health and social care jobs to schoolchildren.
Seeking to raise aspirations and broaden career horizons, each primary, first and special school throughout Gateshead, Newcastle, North Tyneside and Northumberland received clinical-quality ‘mini scrubs’ at the start of this academic year.
There are more than 350 different job roles under the umbrella of health and social care. The mini scrubs packs delivered to schools feature 25 of them, helping to open the eyes of young people to the wealth of jobs available, many of which are non-clinical.
The scrubs are high-quality, hard-wearing replicas of those used by health and care staff, as they are produced in the Northumbria Healthcare Manufacturing and Innovation Hub at Seaton Delaval, which is run by Northumbria Healthcare Facilities Management (NHFM).
The estates subsidiary NHFM also won an award at the event, landing a gold Green Apple Envivonment Award in the Beautiful Buildings category for the Northumbria Sterile Processing Centre, on the trust's Cramlington hospital site.
The £8 million facility, which opened in 2021, replaced two sterilisation departments located at Wansbeck and North Tyneside hospitals, both of which were built more than 30 years ago. It can disinfect and sterilise half-a-million pieces of medical equipment a year, which is an additional 200,000 than could be processed before.
The two-storey carbon-neutral building was largely constructed offsite, which reduced disruption, time and cost, and is powered by green electricity. As the cycles to clean and sterilise equipment are faster than previous ones, it means that the new facility is more efficient in terms of producing much less carbon and reduced use of water and electricity.
Finally, the trust was also awarded Green World Ambassador status for its all-round commitment to sustainability.
Environment is just one of the six pillars of Our Community Promise, the trust’s pledge to focus on all the ways it can improve people’s lives, pushing the boundaries of what an NHS trust can be by focusing on how we can have an even larger impact for everyone who lives and works in the area and wider region. The other pillars are poverty, employment, education, economy and wellbeing.