Deputy Director of Operations for Resilience, Acute Flow and Transformation, Sarah Rothery, collected our Must Dos Award for her pivotal role in implementing the NHS Core Standards for Emergency Preparedness Resilience and Response (EPRR) at CHFT.

Sarah, who has implemented 62 core standards said: "I was given the challenge and knew I had to raise the profile around emergency preparedness. I wanted to make the improvements and had a vision of how we could get there and achieve it. It involves lots of plans, policies and procedures, but it's not all down to me as there are a number of people, who worked alongside me. To those colleagues who went through our decontamination showers in November in our exercise, you’ve played a part too, so thank you!"

Here are some of the words from Sarah’s nomination: “At the end of 2022 new guidance came from NHS England requiring all NHS providers to plan for, and respond to, a wide range of incidents and emergencies that could affect patient health and delivery of care. Sarah was instrumental in implementing the NHS Core Standards for EPRR at CHFT in 2023, when our evidence submitted showed we were non-compliant at just 31%.

“All of the improvement and activities she has led on since saw us achieve a 77% rating in 2024 - a significant improvement. We are clear this will again improve in 2025. We are one of the highest scoring organisations in WYATT, making CHFT a safer place to work.

“As well as this Sarah has run many table top sessions, live exercises and development days and sessions to support and train staff at every level of the organisation and she continues to work tirelessly on this. We have raised our profile at CHFT across the ICB and partners in Fire and Police as well as at the local resilience forum and NHS England in terms of or EPRR capability.”

Joining Sarah as finalists were Dr Fifydani Shamsudin, Dr Huw Masson and Thomas Ladlow, The Maternity Governance Team and Head of Legal Services, Sarah Mather. Well done to them all.