The New Zealand and Australian winners of the inaugural 2021 Specsavers Dame Mary Perkins Medal for outstanding patient care are Celeste Raisbeck from Specsavers Rotorua and Mariella Coluccio from Specsavers Bankstown in Queensland.
The UK-based Specsavers co-founder Dame Mary Perkins announced the winners herself at a Specsavers Clinical Conference (SCC) live event in Brisbane, acknowledging the “invaluable” contribution and positive impact these two individuals have made in their communities. Raisbeck won the award for her outreach work providing ocular health screening to Murupara, a small Māori community in Rotorua that would otherwise not have access to eyecare. More than 100 people in the community have been screened with 38 pairs of free glasses given out. Coluccio was recognised for her perseverance and follow-up of a three-year-old child with severe swollen optic nerves who was discharged from the hospital with fever and nausea. With the child’s parents speaking limited English, Coluccio persisted in contacting the hospital until the child was taken into emergency surgery for a brain haemorrhage.
The Dame Mary Perkins Medal considers nominations of individuals, teams or stores within the Specsavers network and was designed to recognise exemplary patient care, going beyond the normal call of duty in customer service, clinical care, clinical leadership and/or teamwork. The New Zealand runners up wer: Karthi Param, St Lukes, Auckland and Max Drennan, Tauranga, who were both commended for their caring and exceptional acts of emergency patient care.
