Staff Nurse Stuart Young is something of a legend at Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust, for he has just won a national title – ‘Flu Champion 2015’ – for his outstanding efforts in educating and influencing 1,139 colleagues to have their flu jab.
Stuart’s success came from a combination of hard work, dedication and commitment. He was willing to work irregular hours, including weekends, evenings and early mornings to get the message out. He was also the first nurse to undertake mobile vaccination clinics, visiting community sites in an ambulance on a 2-weekly basis, enabling community based staff to get vaccinated sooner.
Not content with engaging with staff face-to-face on multi-sites, Stuart also utilised social media as an effective channel to distribute messages and raise awareness. He sent over 900 tweets of messages about the flu programme to educate employees and followers, as well as tweeting senior national nursing figures, including asking Jeremy Hunt if he’d had his flu jab to which he responded ‘Yes’.
Speaking about his achievement, Stuart said: “I feel very humble and proud to have been given this award. During the ‘Flu Fighter’ campaign, my main aim was to utilise social media as well as face-to-face conversations to highlight the importance of front line staff getting vaccinated, and the importance of herd immunity. I also had the opportunity to highlight our campaign to the Mayor of Sandwell.
“I believe that we all work in the Trust to make lives better for our patients and a key way to do that is to remain healthy and immunised ourselves.”
Apart from helping the Trust to run the Flu fighting campaign successfully, Stuart also works as a staff nurse in the Emergency Department, AMU1 and AMU2 at City Hospital, Birmingham. Although often working under high pressure, Stuart always finds the job rewarding. He enjoys demonstrating care, compassion and kindness as well as utilising his nursing skills to help patients through their healthcare journey, knowing that he can make a positive experience to people’s lives.
Reflecting on the work that he has been carrying out with the Occupational Health and Wellbeing Team and the Emergency Department, Stuart feels that his job gives him the opportunity to try different things each day as he gets to promote the Flu Fighting campaign but also to help patients with different medical conditions. He also appreciates the tremendous support from his colleagues.
Thinking about his next challenge, Stuart is now focusing on helping more staff to get protected from flu in the winter 2015/16. He is conscious that by helping his colleagues at the Trust get flu jabs, he will also help them to protect their patients.
Stuart’s hero is Andrea Spyropoulos, who was President of the Royal College of Nursing (2010 – 2014). Her dedication to the nursing profession, the patients and their relatives has been a true inspiration to him.
Stuart is now living in Solihull. In his spare time, Stuart enjoys reading books, taking a walk or going to the theatre. He also actively engages with the Royal College of Nursing where he is the Secretary of the South Birmingham Branch. He organises Local Learning Events for members to update their skills and ensure they all have CPD (Continual Professional Development) opportunities.
