Congratulations to Pooja Mavadia, Rising Star award winner

We are delighted to announce that one of RNOH’s very own nursing colleagues was amongst the winners of the RCN (Royal College of Nursing) Rising Star Awards. Congratulations to Pooja Mavadia, Clinical Educator, for this superb achievement. Pooja is pictured alongside Mercy Wasike, RNOH Deputy Chief Nurse, after receiving her trophy and certificate at the ceremony on Friday 21 October.

The RCN Rising Star Awards are an opportunity to celebrate nurses, nursing support workers and midwives from the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities, who make an outstanding contribution to health and social care. 

Pooja’s work with the Trust’s newly recruited internationally educated nurses, helped their psychological wellbeing by taking the time to understand the skills and experience they had brought with them, and how they could be utilised in their new roles.

In building close relationships with the nurses, offering support and guidance, Pooja has helped them to settle into life at the RNOH, and allowed them to explore all the opportunities available to them.

Pooja says: “It is an absolute honour to be recognised as one of RCN London’s Rising Stars. I would like to thank Deirdre Coll, Lead Nurse for Education, and Julie Nichols, Clinical Nurse Educator for ABU, for being my dependable mentors and for their endless support to enable me to grow. This has allowed me to transition the same learnings onto our International Nurses here at the RNOH and to celebrate their successes.”

The theme of this year’s RCN Rising Star awards was Anti-racism: Wellbeing and Justice.  Deirdre Cole, Lead Nurse for Education at RNOH, was impressed with Pooja’s work and nominated her for the award, outlining Pooja’s contribution to supporting our international nurses:

“As part of her role, Pooja supports both staff and students within the adult surgical wards. Additionally, she is the designated Trust Preceptorship lead. 

“Pooja’s relationship with the staff is exemplary. She offers much needed support and guidance to our internationally educated nurses as an adjunct to the pastoral support that is offered to them.  Pooja makes the time to understand what skills and previous experience our internationally educated colleagues bring with them.  This has allowed us to know when to tap into the wealth of experience and talent that is available to us from this staff group. 

“A recent example of this is Pooja’s signposting of an opportunity within the Nurse Educator team to an internationally educated nurse who had shared her passion for nurse education, wishing to develop herself within this role but not knowing how to fulfil her dream. With Pooja’s support and guidance that nurse is now are now a valuable member of the Nurse Educator team.

This would not have been possible and the nurse may not have realised her ambition for it without Pooja’s insight, guidance and support. Every nurse has so much talent and potential; we just need to work to ensure that the systems within which they are functioning allow them to maximise on that potential. This is something that Pooja continues to do very well. She is an asset to the RNOH Nurse Education team.”