Jean's Overjoyed to receive MBE

News release
Date of issue: January 15th 2007
For immediate release

A retired nurse, voted Nurse of the Year in 2004 in an award sponsored by Salts Healthcare, has received an MBE in the 2007 New Years Honours List 'for services to Stoma Care Nursing in Northern Ireland'.

From Donaghadee, near Belfast, Jean Roberts said the award was most unexpected. “The first I knew of it was when I received a letter from Downing Street in November and I just couldn't take the news in,” she commented, but she soon came to realise this was no joke when mountains of cards and letters from friends and family offering their congratulations started to drop through her letterbox.

“I've had letters from former colleagues and patients, family and friends and even old school friends that I haven't heard from in years,” she said. “It's been wonderful to hear from them all. My two sisters were also absolutely delighted with the news and I am hoping they will be able to come to Buckingham Palace with me when I go to the formal presentation later in the year. This will be my way of thanking them for helping and supporting me when I was very ill with ulcerative colitis many years ago.”

It was this illness which was the catalyst to Jean's incredible career in stoma care. “Nursing was never on my agenda,” she explained, “mainly because I had no time for sickness and fainted at the sight of blood but my life changed drastically when I became ill at 25. The determination to prevent others suffering as I had done in the early days was all the motivation I needed and this award is a massive tribute to all the patients I looked after because if it wasn't for them, I would never have achieved this.”

Jean began by undertaking a Stoma Care course at St Bartholomews in 1974, and later became one of very few specialist nurses at the time, spending the majority of her career at Belfast's Royal Victoria Hospital. She made it her mission to educate as many people as she could about stoma care both inside the hospital environment and also within the community, speaking at various groups to raise awareness even further. She later joined Belfast-based pharmaceutical wholesaler, Sangers.

Summing up her career, she said: “It was hard work in the early days as I was constantly having to break new ground and battle against reluctance to change. The ward sisters did as much as they could for the patients, at the time, but they didn't have specialist knowledge of stoma care and I wanted to fill this gap. I was desperately keen to provide a source of help which I know has been beneficial to many and at the same time has given me the greatest personal satisfaction.”

Salts Healthcare MD Peter Salt added: “For 30 years, despite her own illness, Jean demonstrated an ongoing passion and enthusiasm for helping people to live with a stoma and constantly looked for new ways to help make their lives a little easier. During this time, she showed a level of dedication and commitment that is quite rare these days, but which helped so many people along the way. We were delighted to name Jean as our Nurse of the Year in 2004, and everyone at Salts is absolutely over the moon that she has now become an MBE. If anyone deserves this, Jean does.”

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For further information, please contact:
Caroline Cowin, Salts Healthcare – 0121 233 2000
or
Michele Turner / Steve Paddock, Market Link PR – 01905 726 575

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