NURSE WHO’S A ROCK FOR HER PATIENTS

THErE is clearly something special about Amy Semper, the nurse who walked for three hours in the snow to get to work, did a double shift — 24 hours in all during that emergency — then walked home again.

Her colleagues and patients don’t need to be told how dedicated Amy is to her work.

As well as those snowbound days last winter, they know about the double shifts she does when the unit is short- staffed (she would rather work a double than allow patients to be put at risk, say her colleagues), and the extra hours after work she devotes to talking with patients or catching up on admin she’s delayed doing to spend time with them.

Sometimes she has to be told she must go home.

And then there are the simple but kind gestures: no birthday is forgotten, with Amy always arranging a cake for patients or staff, often baking it herself.

And her job is not an easy one, for Amy is a ward manager on a secure mental health unit, a ‘difficult environment’, as Jocelyn White, a senior manager at the Lincolnshire mental health unit where Amy works, describes it.

Yet year after year, Amy, who is 27, has forsaken Christmas with her own close-knit family to spend the day at the unit, arriving early to prepare festive treats.

She also takes patients for home visits to see their loved ones (for some this can be for the first time in years). ‘ She helped make me part of my family again,’ says one grateful patient. Another said simply: ‘ Amy has changed my life.’

When asked about her willingness to go the extra mile Amy says: ‘People need to feel supported, and that’s what I want to do — I want to be their rock while they are going through this bad time, and I will do whatever I have to do to help them through.’

‘And it really pays dividends — one of my ex-patients is training to be a vet,’ she says with pride.