We’re excited to announce ten Australian and three New Zealand finalists for the 2021 inaugural Dame Mary Perkins Medal for Outstanding Patient Care.
While the Doug Perkins Medal recognises consistently high standards of clinical excellence for Partners and their teams, the Dame Mary Perkins Medal recognises exceptional acts of patient care in 2021 — going above and beyond in one or more of the following categories:
- customer service
- clinical care
- clinical leadership
- or teamwork to benefit patient care
Unlike the Doug Perkins Medal, based on clinical data, the Dame Mary Perkins Medal considers nominations within the Specsavers network. Individuals, team’s or stores are eligible, including retail and optometry team members, as well as Partners.
The finalists are:
We’ve seen some wonderful care stories from the nominations received including sight, and in some cases, life-saving treatment. Here’s some of the wonderful finalists’ stories:
- Being selfless, an optometrist gives back to hard-to-reach communities through outreach programs, providing care to a community most in need.
- Patient’s response to an optometrist detecting a brain tumor – “Thank you from the bottom of my heart, because of you I get to watch my children grow up and I get to live another day, because of you I am still here, and I will forever be grateful to you for that”.
- Whilst doing a frame adjustment, the dispenser saw the patient had a red eye and booked him into see the optometrist straight away. The patient was subsequently diagnosed with a squamous cell carcinoma.
Judging panel for Dame Mary Perkins award nominations consisted of external stakeholders, peer consensus and Specsavers Support Staff, Cindy Nguyen. The judging panel for Australia was Christina Pizzuto (Optometry Partner, Broadmeadows), Taryn Black (National Program Director, Diabetes Australia) and Cindy Nguyen. For New Zealand – Helen Haslett (Optometry Partner, Masterton), Lesley Springall (Publisher and Editor, NZ Optics) and Cindy Nguyen.
Two winners (AUS and NZ) will be announced by Dame Mary Perkins at SCC in Brisbane on September 15.
Congratulations to all the 2021 finalists. Best of luck at the award ceremony!