Comfort Keepers Home Care staff were delighted to attend the recent 2015 Irish Healthcare Centre Awards event in the wonderful and scenic surroundings of the Royal Marine Hotel, Dun Laoghaire Co. Dublin. Organised and hosted by Irelands leading event organisers, CMG, the Comfort Keepers team had a great time, thoroughly enjoyed the event. Of course, winning one of the awards meant there was plenty of icing on the cake!
More than 400 people from the world of Irish healthcare attended the annual awards ceremony to enjoy the unique combination of a wonderful social occasion and to find out who had won. The Irish Healthcare Centre Awards promote special recognition of the achievements of all award finalists in the healthcare community and the category winners announced on the night. The event shines a spotlight on the fantastic work being done by Irish Healthcare professionals and all the winners displayed a mix of emotions including immense pride, compassion and indeed shock at winning. The event equally highlighted the extraordinary teamwork that goes on behind the scenes in the healthcare profession.
The 2015 judging panel consisted of some of the leading professionals in their fields, and they reviewed all applications in the CMG Awards office and made their decisions on the evidence supplied, a point that was re-iterated on stage on the night by Dr Jim Brown, President of NUI Galway and one of the judges. Dr Brown went on to congratulate all in the room for making it to the final stages and as he reminded all in attendance, the room was full of winners.
The ceremony was opened with an emotional video showcasing previous winners and comments and the event was then introduced by Marty Whelan, who was MC for the evening. After a wonderful dinner, the awards presentations started and winners were invited to the stage by Marty to tell the audience how they felt as winners and he asked them what difference it was going to make to have won an award, both as a team and as an organisation. The night was a rollercoaster of many moving stories of the work done by healthcare professionals; others had exciting stories of innovation and changes, and most agreed the awards they won would give them a little extra spring in their step for the work being recognised.
Comfort Keepers won the Homecare Assisted Living Provider of the Year award and we were finalists in The Oncal Department Initiative so we had a very good night.
The evening was capped off with a standing ovation from the floor for the Healthcare Person of the Year, this year awarded to Dr Austin O’Carroll, who received his award from Tony Cantwell, CMG’s Managing Director. Dr O’Carroll spoke passionately about the need for the ‘powers that be’ to recognise the compassion and genuine care available in the healthcare community, an issue often overlooked, he felt.
The evening finished up with music and dancing into the early hours and the general atmosphere was of fun, pride and camaraderie.
If you would like to become part of the Comfort Keepers team, either as a carer or in another department, do check out our Vacancies page. We currently have many vacancies for the right home carers.
