Marie Carroll-Smith, A midwife who works at Wishaw General Hospital, has been named Midwife of the Year 2016 for the Scottish Region. The award is one of The Royal College of Midwives’ (RCM) Annual Midwifery Awards, recognising the incredible work done by exceptional midwives across the country.

Marie was nominated by local woman Lynn McDowall in tribute to the superb care she received from Marie at the hospital.

In other Wishaw General Hospital news, the hospital has been praised after more than 500 staff were trained to be Dementia Friends. The programme teaches participants to understand about dementia and the small things people can do to help people with the condition.

Also in the Wishaw area an innovative testing kit called quantitative FIT (qFIT) was launched in a small number of GP practices, making NHS Lanarkshire only the second health board in Scotland to pilot the new test. 

The nomination period for the NHS Lanarkshire Staff Awards has now closed. Patients, visitors and staff have been busy nominating staff and volunteers from across the organisation for the care or service that they provide.
The awards team now have the mammoth task of examining over 300 nominations to identify which ones should progress to the next stage.
The awards will see staff from across NHS Lanarkshire being recognised for the inspirational work that they do. 
It wasn’t all good news though as it was reported that 24,516 days were lost through stress during 2014/15. Stress-related absence has seen an increase across the NHS in Scotland in recent years. NHS Lanarkshire is slightly below the national average and the majority of stress-related absence is due to personal issues.

NHS Lanarkshire is committed to supporting our staff to reduce stress and support them back to work whatever the cause. Our EASY (Early Access to Support for You) service is unique to Lanarkshire and can arrange support such as counselling from day one if appropriate. NHS Lanarkshire also funds independent psychology services that staff can self-refer to for counselling.

A named mentor is available to support staff members with non-work related issues such as debt and relationships.

To reduce potential stressful situations, NHS Lanarkshire also has in place a number of work-life balance policies for staff. The policies are available on Firstport and you can speak with your line manager or human resources.