Whittington staff win excellence award

On 6 December 2005 two Whittington Hospital staff received a prestigious award in recognition of their work with the elderly. 

 
Gemma Bourke, Specialist Dietitian and Ella Parker, Speech and Language Therapist at The Whittington Hospital NHS Trust have won a North Central London KSF Equalities Award of Excellence 2005 for their jointly developed Lunchtime Interaction and Feeding Group on the care of older people wards at the Whittington Hospital.  The group is run on a weekly basis for elderly inpatients with a range of cognitive abilities, who have swallowing/feeding difficulties and who are not meeting their nutritional needs. 

Ella and Gemma’s initiative sought to challenge the inequalities encountered by elderly individuals, especially those with dementia whose difficulties are often misunderstood and wrongly labelled.  Within the group each patient has different goals, for example improved self-feeding or nutritional intake.  Intervention is offered to meet each patient’s needs, which helps make the service they use fairer and patients in the group are better able to meet their nutritional needs and have opportunities for improved social interaction.

The Whittington’s clinical nutrition service managers Wendy Martinson and Kyri Shiamtanis are very proud of the development of this facility for patients. They said, “this is an excellent innovative approach which pushes boundaries forward for speech and language therapy and dietetic practise.  We will develop this initiative further so more patients can benefit from it in the future.”