Royal Cornwall Hospitals thanks the team behind its tiniest patients

There are jobs in Cornwall’s hospitals that most people only learn about at the moment they suddenly need them. Neonatal nursing is one of them. Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust has marked International Neonatal Nurses Day by stopping to say thank you to the staff who do it.

A thank you posted in public

The message was short. The trust said it was celebrating its neonatal nurses, whose expertise, compassion, and dedication help deliver outstanding care for one and all.

No campaign, no appeal, no announcement attached to it. Just a note of thanks put where anyone can read it, which is rarer than it sounds. Like a lot of NHS work in Cornwall, neonatal care happens behind a door most of us walk past without noticing, and the people doing it are not in the habit of talking about it themselves.

The team in the photograph

The thank you came with a picture of four members of staff in the trust’s blue scrubs, standing shoulder to shoulder in front of the familiar Cornwall skyline illustration the trust uses on its graphics. Stethoscopes, lanyards, name badges, four smiles. None of them are named in the post.

That is the shape of most hospital teams. A handful of faces you would not pick out in a supermarket queue, who between them cover the nights and the weekends and the phone calls nobody wants to make.

One and all

The phrase the trust reached for at the end of that first line is worth a second look. One and all is Cornwall’s own motto, and it does a quiet bit of work here. Neonatal care is not something families plan for. It arrives, and when it does the team is the same team whoever walks through the door.

The trust finished with a line aimed straight at the staff themselves.

Thank you for the remarkable difference you make to babies and families every day.

📷Credit: Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust