Employee Of The Month - Marie Sparrow

Employee of the Month for October

This is what a colleague had to say about Sister Marie Sparrow.
Sister Marie Sparrow has organised and vastly improved our Paediatric Out-patient service in our District General Hospital over last 3 years.
She is enthusiastic, hardworking and organised.

She has excellent communication skills and rapport with parents and medical staff alike. She is supportive to primary care needs (GPs) and has demonstrated this by taking up new skills and developing them in the following ways:

Marie has her routine workload of OP General Paediatric clinics (9 Consultant clinics per week) turnover is approx 1500 patients per year and Marie provides organization and support throughout the year. Our waiting times and clinic booking is the shortest in the West Midlands and well below the waiting targets.  
In addition, over the last year she has facilitated and organised Paediatric Emergency clinics for Consultant of the week (daily for 1-h)- provides reassurance for families and GPs of acute conditions and improved our activity and waiting times.
Marie is committed to Nurse-led blood-letting clinics 4 days per week and independently sees approximately 90-100 children in her blood clinics a month. This offers GPs convenience of immediate service and provides training/supervision for our new Foundation year doctors plebotomy skills (skills maintenance programme).
Patient Education Role:  Marie provides parents written literature (from approved websites and Trust information) and telephone advice and is happy to liaise about any queries. She has developed this further by developing leaflets through our Clinical Governance Department eg Acute asthma ABC, UTI
Marie has attended courses and training for allergy advice and skin prick tests – this is expanding as more consultants now use this method of testing and she is available to do this during the same OP visit -  thus providing convenience to families and medical staff.
Marie has taken part in Audit work - eg sweat tests performed over one year - she has collected data on 50 sweat tests and organised presentations jointly with middle-grade doctor.
She is readily available to give parents and patients advice and any other nursing information they require eg training of inhaler administration, epipen use, Hormone tests. She arranges immunisations to be taken place sometimes in the form of a separate clinic i.e.  RSV vaccinations, sending parents information leaflets etc and asking for specific information.   
Generally Marie is an enthusisatic all-round person who continues to provide a holistic service based on the needs of the patients and the department. We are extremely fortunate to have her.

Dr Rani Pal

UPDATE
 
We caught up with Marie after her weekend in London.
She said: "I had a great time in London - everything about the hotel was fantastic, the people, the food, the room, the location… everything! We had a great time sightseeing and shopping and went to watch The Lion King while we were there. Our trip to Madame Tussauds was very enjoyable too."