Children’s nurse wins top award

17 August 2009

Lin Graham-Ray, Nurse Consultant for Looked-After Children, has won the Child Health category of the Nursing Standard Nurse Awards 2009.

Lin Graham-Ray, Nurse Consultant for Looked-After Children, has won the Child Health category of the Nursing Standard Nurse Awards 2009.

These prestigious awards identify outstanding achievement and promote excellence and innovation in nursing care.

Looked-after children’s nurses like Lin support young people in the care of local authorities by carrying out health checks and answering all their health and wellbeing related questions.

She said: “There’s never a dull moment in this job. There’s always a new challenge and I’m constantly entertained by the kids – they’re very eloquent and very honest.”

Lin and her colleagues, who are part of the community paediatric team at Chelsea and Westminster, have worked hard to make positive changes to the healthcare services for looked-after children.

She said: “The feedback we get from patients helps us to improve the service. We now provide advice to young patients in a number of different ways – for example, I have an agony aunt column in Hammersmith & Fulham Council’s magazine for looked-after children. If they’re too shy or embarrassed this means they can ask questions anonymously. Young patients told us that’s what they want, so we worked with the magazine to make it happen.”

News of the award came as a complete surprise to Lin who explained: “One of my colleagues nominated me anonymously so I really had no idea. The first I heard about it was when I got an email to say that I’d been put forward for the Child Health award and I had to prepare a response with information about the work I’ve been doing over the past year.”

Lin will receive her award at a special ceremony at the Dorchester Hotel in November and she could also win the overall Nurse of the Year Award which will be announced at the ceremony.

Contributors
George Vasilopoulos