The Rheumatology Booking and Secretaries Team at Oswestry’s specialist orthopaedic hospital have been announced as November’s RJAH Stars Award winners.

They were selected as winners by Stacey Keegan, Chief Executive at The Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital, after being hailed for their work as part of the Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin MSK Transformation Programme.

The RJAH Stars Award is presented monthly to individuals and teams across the Oswestry-based hospital who are nominated by their colleagues for going above and beyond.

They were nominated by Siobahn Price, Project Manager, who said: “As part of the Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin MSK Transformation Programme, to ensure that there is an equitable and sustainable Rheumatology Service for our patients across the county, a project was undertaken to create a single point of access for referrals.

“Previously the Rheumatology Service was split between RJAH and the Telford Musculoskeletal Service, known as TeMS (part of Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust).

“But now, it all is managed by the Rheumatology Service at RJAH, providing one streamlined referral and appointment route but still with multiple clinic locations.

“A huge amount of work and effort has been undertaken by all of the teams both at RJAH and TeMS to achieve this.

“However, I would really like recognition for the Booking and Secretarial Teams who successfully manually transferred all the [approx. 3,500] patient records (new and follow-ups) received from TeMS onto the RJAH clinical record systems in addition to their regular busy work and vacancies in the team. They really are stars!”

The team were presented a keepsake certificate, voucher and box of chocolates – donated by the League of Friends, by Stacey.

She said: “This is such an important piece of work that will make a real difference to patients, but I do not underestimate how much work it has been for the booking and secretarial teams.

“I am hugely grateful to them for everything they have done – both on this specific system project but also every day to support our Rheumatology patients.

“They are thoroughly deserving of being named our RJAH Stars Award winners for November.”