Plymouth nursing and midwifery badge unveiled

Sarah Parker
Authored by Sarah Parker
Posted: Monday, May 19, 2014 - 10:02

Nursing and midwifery staff at Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust are bringing back the hospital badge, with the chosen designed unveiled at Tuesday’s #WeCare Nursing and Midwifery Conference.

Our senior nursing and midwifery team worked in collaboration with Plymouth College of Art, asking the students to come up with designs for two badges. The badges will be awarded to all registered and non-registered nursing and midwifery staff working at Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust in recognition of their hard work and dedication after one year of service and after more than 10 years.

Designed by Luke Axworthy, a student at Plymouth College of Art, the chosen badge design of a lighthouse with a white cross on a red or blue background, was selected as the overall winner by Trust staff, amongst the four shortlisted designs.

Head of Nursing for Surgery, Sue Johnson, who revealed the winning design at the #WeCare conference, said: “We were really impressed with the designs put forward by the college. We decided that the fairest way to select an overall winner would be to share the designs with our staff and ask them to pick their favourite.

“The students all did a fantastic job and they should feel really pleased with their work. On behalf of the Trust, I would like to say thank you to all who took part and a special thanks to Luke. We look forward to now having the designs made up and seeing our nursing and midwifery colleagues wearing their hospital badge with pride.”

Luke, who was invited along to the conference to talk about his design, told the audience: “When I got given the brief I started a lot of research into the old nursing badges, which epitomised the old style of nursing. I wanted to make something more contemporary for this. I was inspired by the Florence Nightingale medal with the cross and a singular image of a lighthouse – a symbol of strength, stability and hope, which is what you all represent as nurses and midwives.

“Every nurse who works and trains at Derriford Hospital will wear that badge. It feels a bit strange – I know a few nurses and they’re all going to be wearing that badge. And if I ever break my leg and need to go to Derriford, I’ll then be treated by nurses wearing my badge!”
The college received approximately 25 submissions from their students for the badge design and shortlisted them down to the final four. More than 604 votes were cast by staff at the Trust with the winning design receiving 278 of these.

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