MonoMonday: 15 Minutes of Fame

As part of her initiative to find out more about us all via MonoMonday this month, Dollykgray has asked us to illustrate and describe our personal "15 Minutes of Fame", which Andy Warhol (seemingly apocryphally) is said to have stated that we all have.

I struggled on this one until my Editor kindly reminded me that 10 years ago the team which I led was shortlisted in the top three of the Hospital Doctor Awards Finals (in the surgical category). This meant that a colleague and I, along with 4 nurses, were invited on an expenses-paid trip to a gala event (held in the Park Lane Hilton in London) for the announcement of the winners in each category. It was quite a night, although in the end we were beaten  to the first place by another team. So we weren't quite fully famous - but we did receive a certificate confirming our place as finalists. As our team didn't actually win I was cheated out of a kiss from Claudia Winkleman, who was announcing the results that evening and congratulating the winners (too bad!!).

The work we'd done (very much a team effort) had been carried out over about 15 years, in connection with an eye condition which can affect babies born very prematurely. If not detected and treated promptly it can result in lifelong blindness. We'd taken the lead in coordinating the screening for this condition throughout the northeast region, and arranged to provide urgent treatment when indicated. As screening has to commence when the baby is only 6-7 weeks old it's important that screening occurs in a timely fashion.

The main blip picture is a selfie taken today, to keep within blip "rules". However I've sneaked in a small inset taken on the night 10 years ago, when I looked rather younger and was slightly more smartly dressed :-)

Regretably, the "Hospital Doctor" publication which organised and funded the award went into liquidation a few months later. Maybe they spent too much that night...! Oh well, so be it. At least the cash didn't come from NHS funds.

(PS Just to clarify - we didn't devise the treatment or the idea of screening for it - we only worked out how best to coordinate the screening in our region to make sure it happened, and provided a treatment service for it.)