Sharon Armitage – Lifetime Achievement Award
We're continuing to celebrate our Quality Awards 2024 winners - the people across NHFT who are making a difference to patients, service users and carers every single day.
We're taking a closer look at the winners and asking them to tell us more about their role and find out why they were nominated.
Despite once being told by her dad that she'd never stick it out in nursing, more than 50 years later Sharon Armitage continues to dedicate her life to the profession and caring for others.
At our recent Quality Awards, the Palliative Care Clinical Nurse Specialist at Cynthia Spencer Hospice, won the Lifetime Achievement Award.
"I nearly fell off my chair when I heard I'd been nominated", Sharon said, "and when I heard I'd won on the night it was lovely."
Despite technically retiring in January 2024, Sharon continues to support patients and be a "calm and knowledgeable resource" through NHFT's staff bank.
Sharon started training as a nurse back in 1972 at Northampton General Hospital. She said nursing was very different back then, "very structured and regimented", with very stern matrons. Towards the end of the decade, Sharon became a district nurse caring for many end-of-life patients and this inspired her to dedicate much of her life to palliative care.
Sharon, who was born and bred in Northampton, was one of 13 children, so had many younger siblings.
We didn't have much back then, so I know what poverty feels like, also, because it was a big family, I had to care for my younger brothers and sisters, so I guess my career looking after people came from that.
In the 1990s, Sharon started a role at the Cynthia Spencer Hospice, with which she had a close association since it opened in 1976. She later became hospital manager at Danetre Hospital in Daventry where she led the opening of an out-of-hours service and minor injuries unit, meaning people no longer had to travel miles to get urgent care.
Following a period juggling her workload with studying for a part-time degree at Oxford Brookes University, she became a MacMillan Nurse for a decade, before joining NHFT's Cransley Hospice in 2005. She later took a role at Jersey Hospice, in the Channel Islands, where she set up a 24-hour nursing service.
"Working in Jersey was an experience," she said, "sometimes planes carrying medicine couldn't get through because of the weather, and if patients needed urgent care, because we had limited facilities, we had to fly them back to Southampton!"
When her sister suffered a brain haemorrhage in 2014, Sharon moved to a role at St Giles Hospice in Lichfield, so she could help care for her. Following some time working at Willen Hospice in Milton Keynes, Sharon rejoined the Cynthia Spencer Hospice in 2019 which she said had "always had a special place in my heart."
Sharon said: "I enjoy what I do; meeting patients and being a point of contact for people at a challenging time in their lives. I aim to be compassionate. I want the patient to be in charge; it can be a scary time, but I'm there to support them, and their families, and give them options. For example, I discuss if patients want to be at the hospice or at home, and if they choose home, we help set that up for them. I want to make sure they live out their life with dignity."
Sharon also takes time to mentor junior staff and regularly provides formal, as well as impromptu, teaching sessions to enhance the knowledge of others.
"People say I have inspired them to take up a role in palliative care," Sharon said, "this is lovely because it's perhaps a role that isn't anyone's cup of tea, but if I can help recruit bank staff and permanent roles that makes me very proud."
Whilst I retired early in 2024, I like a challenge, and this is a job that always throws up plenty of those! Despite all the changes I've seen over the years, I've never been afraid to embrace it, nursing has, and always will, evolve; you have to move with the times.
Sharon, who is also a carer for her disabled sister-in-law, shows no signs of stopping supporting patients. She said: "I recently read about a lady in Leicester who is still nursing at the age of 84 - so you never know!"
You can read more about Specialist Palliative Care here.