HEALTH HERO AWARDS YOUR HERO

Five uplifting stories. Countless nominations. Now we proudly present the winner of our competition to find Britain’s most inspiring health worker — crowned by the PM herself at No 10 as ...

Six months after Debra Radley’s two-year- old daughter Bella was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, Debra, 50, hit rock-bottom. ‘Bella hated the insulin injections so much that she spent all her time running away from us screaming,’ she recalls. ‘Then Bella realised that if she didn’t eat, she didn’t get an injection, so she stopped eating. One particular day, we were strapping her down, trying to force-feed her — she was screaming, i was crying, her older sister Phoebe, who was only three, was crying — and i just sank down on my knees and banged my head against the wall. i just thought: “i can’t do this any more.” ’

‘But then,’ says Debra, bursting into tears of gratitude, ‘we found Professor Hindmarsh. He mended our family and gave us back our life. He’s the calmest man i’ve ever met. He listened as all this anger and rage and grief poured from me, and then he said: “She’s a beautiful, wonderful little girl and we’re going to help her. You are going to be OK as a family.” i was so relieved, i just sobbed and sobbed.’

Professor Peter Hindmarsh (inset) — or The Prof as his small patients call him — is a consultant in paediatric endocrinology and diabetes at University College London Hospitals and Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children.

To both parents and children, he is, quite simply, a hero. That’s why they nominated him for our awards, and last week at a special event at Downing Street, he was announced the overall winner.

After the ceremony, Prime Minister Theresa May spoke of the ‘care, compassion and professionalism’ the Daily Mail Health Heroes have shown their patients, adding that she was ‘very proud’ to have met them and had the opportunity to thank them ‘for their incredible hard work and dedication’.

For Professor Hindmarsh’s families, this dedication is truly life-transforming. His patients have hormonal disorders that affect them every day, often causing enormous anxiety and fear.

When it comes to treatment, Professor Hindmarsh is clearly a superb clinician — in Bella’s case, he showed the Radleys exactly how to count carbohydrates and monitor her wildly fluctuating overnight blood glucose. No one had done this before.

He also put her onto an insulin pump, so she doesn’t need injections. ‘Professor Hindmarsh showed us how to connect it to Bella’s teddy bears, which really normalised it,’ says Debra. ‘He spoke to Phoebe about how she felt, too, and also referred her to a play therapist.’

Another of his patients, a boy with an adrenal disorder that meant he couldn’t make cortisol, which is essential for vital bodily processes, became progressively more unwell, because his body wasn’t absorbing his cortisol tablets.

Professor Hindmarsh decided to rejig an insulin pump to help — the hydrocortisone pump he developed is now used all over the world.

As well as his clinical expertise, Professor Hindmarsh brings true compassion, according to the families he helps. Debra says that when Bella came under Professor Hindmarsh’s care, ‘for the first time, we felt held and helped and completely supported’.

Adrienne Burton, 48, whose daughter Jessica, now 17, was born with a thyroid disorder, nominated The Prof for the Mail’s Health Hero Awards. She says: ‘ Most of his patients have moved from other hospitals, from across the country, just to see The Prof and get the gold standard of care he delivers. ‘i don’t mean gold standard of medical care — although he does deliver that — i mean the gold standard of human care, which he delivers by the bucketload.’ Jessica had her pancreas removed soon after birth and became insulin-dependent at two months old. ‘When Jessica got her first insulin pump at the age of eight, two weeks before Christmas, he gave me his home phone number so i could call on Christmas Day, even though he wasn’t on call. ‘As a family, we’ve seen literally hundreds and hundreds of doctors and nurses over the years — Professor Hindmarsh is our outstanding favourite.’ When Jane Ripley Neale, 49, from Hastings, took her son Joe, 17, to see The Prof for the first time when he was nine, they were very nervous. ‘it was our first time at a big prestigious hospital, with a top specialist. But within five minutes, he was wrestling with Joe: we were all in stitches.’ Adrienne adds: ‘One of the lovely things he does for every child is write to them after each clinic appointment. He remembers the things that are important to them and sends positive messages, such as: “Didn’t you do really well on holiday with your blood sugars!” ‘i wish he could see the look on our children’s faces when they read those letters from their Prof. He is the most amazing man with the most amazing brain, which enables him to be better than all other doctors we’ve come across, because he really thinks outside the box.’ The morning after he received his award, Professor Hindmarsh, 64, was still in shock. ‘i’m just doing any job,’ he insists. Professor Hindmarsh grew up in Gateshead and went to a grammar school. He says he wasn’t academically brilliant, but was attracted to medicine as it combined science with ‘the human bit’ — ‘i wanted to help people’.

Professor Hindmarsh, who only works for the NHS, chose paediatrics rather than surgery ‘as i can’t tie knots’, he says, adding that he really chose it for that ‘human bit’.

‘Often, you are looking after three or four “patients”: the sick child, the parents, who are often very fragile, and any siblings who are also affected by a sibling being ill. it forces you to look at things holistically.

‘You’re not just helping the child, but making sure life carries on as normal for everyone.’

He points out while traditional medical thinking is firmly rooted in the infectious disease era — you complete a course of treatment and get better — chronic disease needs a different approach.

‘Having to inject your tiny child with insulin every day is appalling and unthinkable, but it’s not going to go away. it’s painful and isolating for children because it means they’re not like everyone else.’

The parents themselves often mourn the loss of normal family life. Professor Hindmarsh’s deep connection with his families is palpable. ‘You have to understand chronic diseases aren’t six pages in a textbook, they’re someone’s life,’ he says. ‘A big part of my role is empathising and understanding.’

it’s easy to see why families have transferred to his care from other hospitals where they’ve been made to feel that they and their child are ‘failing’ as they haven’t managed to get the disease under control. F OR a professor with more than 360 academic papers behind him, Peter Hindmarsh is extraordinarily humble — the word ‘modest’ is frequently used by the families.

But he points out that while he might see a patient for a total of four to six hours over a year, they’ve lived with their condition for almost 9,000 hours. ‘And after four hours, i’m saying i know more than you? Come on! i learn from my patients every day.’

He recalls a professor who taught him at medical school saying: ‘The most important thing is to shut up and listen because the patient is telling you the answer.’ The hydrocortisone pump he developed was a direct result of that approach. ‘There aren’t many times in medicine when you do something and it works perfectly,’ he chuckles.

‘Part of the job is to think outside the box — and the key to that is to listen to patients and believe them when they tell me something, as they are the expert on them.

‘On the face of it, it looked as though this patient wasn’t taking his medication correctly, but he said he was and i believed him.’

Professor Hindmarsh is married to Rosemary, a psychiatrist, and they have three daughters. He remembers ‘ always managing somehow to do the school run between us, and interminable parents’ evenings where we were told off and made to feel completely useless as parents’.

His patients now keep him grounded. ‘The thing about paediatrics is kids don’t realise you’re important,’ he laughs. Fortunately for them, he has no plans to retire: ‘i’ll carry on until i’m 70.’

His own health heroes are his patients and their families. ‘i am constantly amazed at what parents do and filled with admiration for what they achieve. i wish all my families could have been at No. 10 with me because, really, i have accepted this award for them.