Covid nurse at Chesterfield Royal Hospital receives surprise Christmas gift

Critical care nurse Helen Corbett was presented with a selection of festive goodies from the staff at Scrivens Opticians & Hearing Care in Ripley in recognition of her dedication during the pandemic.

Emma Baldwin, manager of the Oxford Street branch said: “Helen is one of our customers and we wanted to show our appreciation of her work at such a challenging time. She works full-time, has a busy family life and still manages to stay positive and calm. Helen always puts others before herself, even when facing Covid head-on.

“We nominated her in our company’s festive campaign, which recognises special people with a surprise gift and a £50 Scrivens voucher. She certainly deserves it.”

Mother-of-two Helen said: “It was a very nice surprise. I have been going to the branch for about ten years. The staff are very friendly and approachable but I never expected anything like this.”

Working in the intensive care and high dependency units, Helen and her colleagues are on the frontline of the pandemic. She said: “I have been in nursing for 15 years and have never known the hospital to be so busy and for patients to be so poorly.”

Helen juggles a demanding job with family life in Chesterfield where she lives with her husband and two sons aged eight and 11.

Scrivens Opticians & Hearing Care asked its 174 branches in England and Wales to nominate customers who they felt deserved a Christmas treat. The best were chosen to receive a gift box.

Figures released by the NHS on December 16, 2020, showed that 198 people had died from Covid at Chesterifeld Royal Hospital since the pandemic started in March. The total number of confirmed reported deaths in hospitals in England was 45,126.

A total of 104 of these virus related fatalities occurred in healthcare facilities across the Midlands.

The patients who lost their lives between August 4 and December 15 were aged between 40 and 100 years old and all except 13 people had known underlying health conditions.