NHS heroes awarded for helping Arena victims
They helped people suffering the "most unimaginable injuries"
NHS heroes who helped victims of recent terror attacks and the Grenfell Tower tragedy have been awarded for their resilience and compassion''.
Hospital staff and paramedics who helped victims of the fire as well as those affected by the terror attacks in Manchester and London received a special recognition award at the NHS Expo conference in Manchester.
Health staff helped people suffering the most unimaginable injuries'', delegates were told.
Many staff who had just finished their shift turned around and went back into work while others made themselves useful by supplying food for frontline medics or finding phone chargers so people could tell their families they were safe.
Helen Mottram, paramedic at North West Ambulance Service, said she felt privileged'' to receive an award on behalf of her organisation.
The 38-year-old from Stockport, who has been a paramedic for 20 years, was among the first on the scene of the bomb explosion at Manchester Arena in May.
She told the Press Association: I was the third paramedic to go into the arena. At that point it was on voluntary basis - we knew that there had been some form of a terrorist attack and we were asked for volunteers as we knew there had been fatalities and injured people.
It was a very hard night. My role was a triage officer so I had to go in, triage the initial patients.
Obviously the scene was chaotic, but the response from North West Ambulance Service was very calm and professional.
It was one of the proudest nights to have served.''
A&E matron Charlotte Brownhill and Joe O'Brien, a senior sister in the surgical department of Stepping Hill hospital in Stockport, received an award on behalf of their organisation, Stockport NHS Foundation Trust.
Both women had worked that day and immediately turned round and went back to work when they heard the news.
Ms O'Brien told the Press Association: We both came in from home when we heard what had happened in Manchester and just wanted to support our teams and look after patients.
Extra people came in as we needed them and it all worked very smoothly.
People also did things like helping relatives find phone chargers - people just expected to nip to the arena and back so they didn't have phone chargers. They wanted to reassure their families they were OK but their phones had run out of battery.
We had to stop some staff from coming in because we needed to make sure there were staff for the morning.''
Ms Brownhill added: It was horrific in what we saw for patients.
But our teamwork and hospital worked well, so to see them in action was amazing.''
Presenting the award to representatives of the trusts which run the hospitals, Professor Jane Cummings, chief nursing officer for England based at NHS England, said: We have had appalling horror and terrorism in London with the Westminster attack in March, we had the London Bridge incident in June, we had the Grenfell Tower fire and we also had the Manchester bombing in the arena in this very city.
What these tragedies have highlighted was the resilience and compassion of emergency services and NHS staff who time after time responded and tended to the victims who had suffered unimaginable injuries and kept themselves going.
They kept putting the needs of those people first, hour after hour after hour.
Today we want to recognise the efforts of those staff who came together as one to help those victims on what was possibly the worst night of their lives in both London and Manchester.
Doctors, nurses, paramedics, pharmacists, health service managers even, who did everything they could to help manage and treat people in the most effective way.
In preparing for today we read testimonies of emergency department staff, people who co-ordinated departments to ensure their hospitals could cope with the growing demand, staff who completed shifts and were on their way home who turned around and went back and worked all night, staff who loaded up their cars with food and actually help to feed and keep people going in those very important hours.
This was the NHS at its best.
This is why so many of our staff do the jobs they do because they want to help those that are in pain, that are distressed, that are suffering from trauma.''
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