Every member of staff at UHS has been a hero over the past 18 months, as they have risen to the challenges of the pandemic.

Our annual awards ceremony has therefore been renamed this year to reflect the superheroes that deserve special recognition for their work.

Usually, we would gather for a ceremony in person but due to the restrictions that are still in place across our hospitals to limit the risk of infection spread, we have organised an online event to celebrate our award winners this year.

Stories of colleagues going the extra mile for their patients in the most difficult of circumstances, developing new initiatives to make their care better or supporting their teams in achieving great outcomes together, have been submitted in dozens of nominations we received.

This year our awards also reflected our trust vales of Patients first, Working Together and Always Improving - guiding principles that have steered our course over the past 18 months.

A panel of judges had a particularly difficult time picking winners from the categories, such was the incredibly high standard of entries reflecting the monumental effort made by staff.

Please celebrate the award winners with us as we have compiled a film of those who won the prizes. The film features our executive team paying tribute to them and all our incredible staff.

Hospital Super Heroes winners and runners-up

	Winner	Runner-up
Patients superhero	Hayley Rayner, ward manager D7T	Jade Donnelly and Sohail Rahmamy
Patient team Superheroes	Vulnerable adult support	Critical care therapy and adult home ventilation physio
Patient care innovation	Molly Watts, staff nurse paediatric ICU	Elizabeth Shepherd and Eye casualty triage team
Working together most collaborative team	Critical care	Infection prevention and CD RHDU team
Working together best team player	Diana Mondo, research and development	Amelia Pietropaolo and Joan Newman
Working together most inspirational leader	Julie Brooks, head of infection prevention, and Samantha Brownsea, targeted lung health checks	Sanja Gupta and Denny Levett
Always improving, clinical innovation of the year	Point of care testing team	Will Rivenburg, Zoe Sherlock, Danielle Worsely
Always improving, operational innovation	AMU nurses	Sara Shelton, Rachel Bailey, Dave Waghorn
Always improving, most inspiring innovator	Emma Jane Squires, patient experience improvement manager	Caroline Wyatt, Clare Phillips
Charity star	Laura Sinclair, midwife	Julian Smith, Tim Bryant, Charlie Bryant and Gail Doran
Outstanding volunteer	Kieran Fifield	Claire Gray, Tony Smyth
CEO award	Matt Keatley	Kathryn Machin, Medicine for Older People wards
Chair's outstanding team achievement award	Pathology	Infection prevention
Chair's outstanding team individual award	Saul Faust, director of NIHR clinical research facility	Aiman Alzetani
Southern Daily Echo 'Readers' Choice' award	Evan Davies, consultant spinal surgeon	Amy Tooley, staff nurse, cancer care

Celebrating our hospital super heroes