It’s the morning after the night before – and what a night it was, as we celebrated everything our amazing colleagues at #TeamCHFT do every day at our CHuFT Awards ceremony.

More than 300 colleagues came together to hear who our 35 winners were, and each one received a cheer that raised the roof. Though I must give a special mention to our host for the night, Medical Director, Neeraj Bhasin, who has clearly missed his true calling.

You can read all the winners’ inspirational stories below, including some of the words from their nominations. I know I’ve said it before, but all our 420 nominees are winners in my eyes, so a huge well done if you received a nomination and thank you to everyone who put a colleague or team forward. I would also like to give a shout out to the teams behind the scenes who made the event happen. They secured sponsors to fully fund the event and even got nine-time Paralympic Champion Hannah Cockroft to send in a special video message for our wonderful colleagues, so thank you. We’ll be following up with CHuFT on the Road soon, so watch this space as we keep the buzz of our awards going.

It’s not the end of this week’s celebrations just yet. Later today I’ll also have the absolute honour of presenting our Long Service Awards, which you’ll be able to read more about in Monday’s CHFT News.

The Awards came against the backdrop of the start of national industrial action by BMA Resident Doctors starting today. Whilst we couldn’t have foreseen the dates clashing, I appreciate that many of you may be supporting in other areas over the next few days or have given up your time to support your colleagues during this period. So, before you read our stories below, I’d like to give a sincere thank you to all colleagues, including those of you who are often the first port of call for our patients; our medical secretaries, bookings teams and admin colleagues. Remember that support is available for all colleagues, so please share any concerns with your clinical director or manager, and you can also visit the Industrial Action Hub on the intranet for further information. Thank you to you all for stepping up with One Culture of Care – it’s what makes CHFT a very special place to work.

When I get back from my annual leave, we’ll have welcomed Huber, our construction partners for the Multi Storey Car Park, on site at CRH. It means that you will see more activity happening in the coming weeks. More communications will follow – but I would like to thank you all for your patience and understanding throughout the car park enabling works.

Enjoy reading this special edition – the stories behind them are really uplifting. I’ll repeat what I said last night at the start of the Awards. You really can’t bottle what happens at CHFT. It’s a unique place to work, made better by each and every one of you and I feel privileged and incredibly proud of all we’ve achieved together and what’s to come.

Keep looking out for one another.

Brendan