She's just great!.That's how Alison Milner was described by her nominator Gavin Boyd.

Owen's arrival with the Star Award certificate caught Alison totally by surprise in true Eamonn Andrews style. He greeted her with: "This is your life! You're the glue holding everything all together in Pathology. Congratulations Alison and you deserve this. You can blame Gavin for the embarassment."

Gavin added: "You do hold us all together and I think you're fantastic. You do so much in such a lovely and nice way. You're just great to work with"

After she recovered from the shock, Alison told CHFT Weekly: "All I can say is thank you so much! We have a great team in Pathology and It’s a privilege to be working with them. Quality is always about the team and never the individual. It makes my job so much easier to be surrounded by staff of all grades with a commitment to continual improvement and a desire to achieve high standards for our patients"

Here's what Gavin said.

He hailed her as "the backbone of the Pathology Quality system".  He said she has been responsible for the driving forward the quality agenda within Pathology, notably leading to the various laboratory services achieving ISO:15189 accreditation. This may sound like boring lab talk - but it's a huge piece of work that she has been doing day in, and day out for years, he said.

"In Pathology, particularly as the Quality Manager, you are quite hidden in the wider organisation. But Alison's work is to ensure that the results we get in Pathology are accurate and reproducible - this has massive clinical impact on a daily basis and the Trust as a whole could learn so much about Quality for our Pathology Quality Guru.

He added: "She is also friendly, approachable, works many many hours more than she is paid for, and no problem is too big or small for her. She's just great, and deserves some Trust-wide recognition for the work she does, that has such a massive impact, although is largely hidden from public gaze."

He then summed her up in three words as "Four Pillars Embodied" and explained....

Go See - she's so active in the world of Pathology Quality Networks. She's visited various different places around the country to view different ways of doing things, and brings lots of ideas back on how to improve quality within Pathology.
Puts the Patient First - getting accurate results is fundamental in Pathology - most clinical decisions are based on them. Through the work that Alison does to ensure we have a high quality pathology service, she is ensuring that the results are correct, and patients therefore benefit hugely. We take it for granted that the results from the lab are right correct. This is because we invest so much time and effort into quality - and Alison as Pathology Manager does this so well.
Work Together to Get Results - she's been a huge proponent of pushing forward clinical leadership within Pathology. She works really well with all clinical leads in pathology to ensure that the pathology service is clinically orientated, and therefore patient focused.
Do the Must Dos - Alison has driven the success within Pathology to achieve ISO:15189 accreditation in the various Pathology disciplines. This is a massive achievement (I appreciate it won't make much sense, but it's huge and we are recognised among external inspectors as having an execptional quality management system, largely due to Alison in her role as Pathology Quality Manager.