Best wishes for a healthy, happy and caring New Year

Welcome the holidays and welcome the long list I write every year about what I am giving to whom. For people like me – and yes, we are many – every year we live out a frenzied race to track down and purchase the latest video game, the newest perfume, or the coolest hoodie for family and friends. And every year when the dust settles and the extra three pounds of holiday feasting accumulates, we confess it will be different next year.

The older I get, the more thoughtful I become about what I do with my time. I realize the hours spent crawling the mall is time I will never get back. I don’t begrudge the time I spend on my family and friends as I know for the most part, the effort’s appreciated. Yet the older I get I recognize it’s less about the things you give and get and more about what you do for others.

I need to take a page from the wonderful role models around me – the people I work with at NHS. This holiday season there are many throughout NHS doing something for others – people they know, or may only meet once in their lives and for those who are spending their final days in hospital. It’s not about the bows, the packaging or the gift cards – it’s about humanity and the heart.

From the staff who bake home-made goodies for the palliative patients’ holiday tea to the long-service auxilian who worked the gift shop every Christmas, to those staff who buy or make and wrap presents for long stay patients, to the fellow who runs the annual ‘don’t pay a cent’ poinsettia sale, to the employees and docs filling the baskets and bins for the families in their local community who lack the means to put food on the table – there are many across our sites who celebrate humanity.

Thank you all for all that you do, thank you for being role models for others. And best wishes to all, a healthy, happy and caring New Year. «

Christine Clark, Chief Communications Officer