Celebrating 700 years of loyal service

The Trust’s annual Long Service Awards were held on 5 December in Shepherd Hall, St Thomas’ to celebrate more than 700 years of loyal service by staff.

The awards recognise and reward staff who have worked for Guy’s and St Thomas’ for a minimum of 20 years. Many of those recognised last week have provided 25 years of service or more.

A total of 29 staff collected awards from Trust Chairman Sir Hugh Taylor who presented them with gold and silver badges. Both clinical and non-clinical staff were recognised - from community nursing, paediatric cardiology and radiology to reception, catering and security. The following staff were all awarded for 25 years’ service at the Trust:

Catherine Appiah, a community midwife whose career has covered all aspects of midwifery, including antenatal, labour and postnatal care. Over the last decade she has worked in the community providing care for women at two GP practices, where she cares for women in the hospital and at planned homebirths. In 2010 she was voted The British Journal of Midwifery's Community Midwife of the Year.

David Buckland, a dental equipment maintenance manager, joined Guy's Hospital in 1988 as a student medical technical officer. He manages the dental equipment, including the fleet of 264 dental chairs. Dave represented the dental directorate on the Y2K project from 1997-2000 and spent the millennium at Guy's to ensure that there were no technical glitches.  

Samantha Sands, a security department administrator, began her working career at the Trust as a clerical assistant in general and vascular surgery at Guy’s. For the last eight years she has been the backbone of the security department. She is responsible for all its administration, including car parking, lost property and the risk register. 

Lisa Silas, a matron in the living donor team, started her career as a student nurse on the old Astley Cooper Ward at Guy’s Hospital. She is a great patient advocate and strives to ensure that the care they receive from the whole team is of the highest standard. Her work on renal anaemia gained her both a national and international profile. 

Sir Hugh Taylor, Chairman of Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust said: “I am incredibly proud that we have so many loyal and long-serving staff. The Long Service Awards are our chance to recognise the hard work and dedication of the people who have shown outstanding commitment to helping our patients in a wide variety of roles – without them our hospitals and community services simply would not function.”

The full list of staff receiving a Long Service Award is as follows: