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Our search for the nurse of the year starts this
week with the launch of the Nursing Standard Nurse 2000 awards.
Last year's overall winner, Gill Brook, tells Charlotte Alderman
where the award has taken her
THE FULL meaning of the expression 'it will be a night to remember' only hit Gill Brook last November. On that momentous evening, she was named as overall winner of the Nursing Standard millennium nurse awards. 'It was absolutely amazing. There were so many who could have won the award, I genuinely didn't think it would be me,' she says.
Ms Brook won the award for her work at the Diana, Princess of Wales Children's Hospital, Birmingham, where she is clinical nurse specialist in the liver unit. Giving children choices and some control over what happens to them throughout their illness has now become a way of life for all the multidisciplinary team.
Although there was an immediate effect of winning the award - Ms Brook says that when she heard her name announced her arms and legs ceased to function - the total impact took longer. 'It was months before the implications of winning the award really sank in,' she says. 'I almost thought they'd made a mistake and they'd ring up and take it away.'
One thing Ms Brook had to learn early on was how to deal with the media. 'I've learnt to play for time,' she says. 'If they ring me up, l ask how they got my name and what they want to talk to me about. Then I ask them to call back. I've learnt to say "I'm not prepared to answer that question", because there's always the big political agenda. If I think...