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Get fit in 2012 and support Ostomy Lifestyle!

If your New Year's resolution is to get fit then we have some great ideas for you! 

We have guaranteed places in the British London 10km run on 8th July. For more details see here 

And if cycling is more your thing then you might be interested in taking up one of our places in the Cycletta Event series for female riders of all abilities. For more details see here

All our fundraisers receive as much support as they need when setting up their Just Giving page or collecting offline sponsorship. We will promote your hard work on our Facebook & Twitter feeds (if you want us to!) and once you've raised £50+ we'll send you a fabulous Ostomy Lifestyle sports vest or tee! 

So what are you waiting for?! Get in touch today - Helen on 0118 324 0069 or helen.bracey@ostomylifestyle.org

In memoriam, Carol Kay

It is with great sadness that we report that Carol Kay, one of the founding volunteers of Ostomy Lifestyle, has passed away. Carol died on 27th December 2011 in Reading. Carol used her professional skills as a librarian to manage our Helpline resource library and her personal experience as a stoma patient to support people on our Helpline. She was a well loved and valued part of our team and will be much missed by staff and volunteers alike. Our thoughts are with her family at this time.

Underwear & Swimwear Show footage

We have just released footage from the Ostomy Lifestyle Underwear & Swimwear show 2011 event which was held at Birmingham Town Hall on 2nd November.

The show was truly inspirational, showing that people can bounce back from life changing surgery. So if you weren't able to join us on the night, you can get a flavour for what happened here. You can also download a copy of the show catalogue featuring all the items modelled during the show.

Also, if you haven't seen them yet, you can watch each of the 14 models tell you about their experiences of living with a stoma and why the show is so important to them.

We hope you will continue to support us to organise these positive lifestyle events and will update you with news of upcoming events closer to the time.

2012 Ostomy Lifestyle Awards

Nominations are now open for the 2012 Ostomy Lifestyle Awards. Last year’s awards saw 18 people, organisations and products nominated and hundreds of you voted for those you felt deserved recognition for their efforts to support people affected by stoma surgery.

The categories are :

  • Industry Professional of the year
  • Local Support Group of the year
  • Nurse of the year
  • Most Innovative Product
  • Volunteer of the year

Awards will be decided by public vote in the New Year. To make your nomination please fill in our online form or call us on 0118 324 0069 for a nomination form.

The Information Standard

At Ostomy Lifestyle we firmly believe in producing reliable, accurate and accessible information for our service users (people who have had, or may need to have stoma surgery, their family and friends, medical professionals and members of the public). To show our commitment to these values we are working towards gaining the Information Standard. This is a certification process implemented by the Department of Health to allow the public to choose reliable information when seeking knowledge on medical and health related subjects. Read more about the Information Standard

As part of the process of gaining the Standard, and the long term production of our patient information, we are consulting with our service users about the information we produce and this is where you come in. We need people to help us pinpoint what information sheets are most important to patients and then review the information we produce.

If you are interested in being part of this we will require you to complete some online surveys, read draft information sheets and give feedback. All of this can be done from your home, although we may wish to meet with our Panel all together on occasion, in the event of which we would cover all travel expenses.

To help you, and us, decide if this is something you might be able to help with we have devised a short survey.

If you have any questions about this please contact Helen Bracey on 0118 324 0069 or helen.bracey@ostomylifestyle.org

New Chief Executive

I would like to inform you of some changes at Ostomy Lifestyle. Neil Basil has resigned from his role as Chief Executive of Ostomy Lifestyle so that he can pursue a new, separate venture within the stoma industry. As you may know, Neil was instrumental in founding the charity in 2007 and has been a great innovator of services as well as providing direction to the charity. We are pleased that Neil will continue to support the charity as a Trustee.

We welcome Lynn Love as our new Chief Executive. Lynn has extensive management experience, having worked in the pharmaceutical industry for many years before changing to work in the voluntary sector. Lynn has worked in senior management within several health related charities and is looking forward to working with the team to provide more life changing support for people affected by stoma surgery.

The Ostomy Lifestyle team also comprises of Helen Bracey(Helpline Services Manager), Robin Radley (Helpline Stoma Care Nurse), Louise Sugden (Accountant) and Emily Kay (Website administrator).

Yours sincerely
 
Laurie Clark
Chair of the Trustees
Ostomy Lifestyle

Ostomy Lifestyle win in the Stomawise 2011 Awards!

Stomawise 2011 Awards Results

Over the past 3 months visitors to the Stomawise website have been voting for their favourites in the following categories:
Most Innovative Product
Best DAC (Delivery Company)
Best Support Organisation/Blog

Voting ended on 1st November 2011 and the results are as follows:

The winner of the “Most Innovative Product” with 38% of the votes is Comfizz for their Support Belt
The winner of the “Best DAC (Delivery Company)” with 35.5% of the votes is Fittleworth
The winner of the “Best Support Organisation/Blog” with 42% of the votes is Ostomy Lifestyle

Thank you to all who voted for us!

Survey on treatment denials

As you may have read recently in the newspapers, there are concerns that due to the financial pressures facing the NHS, patients are being denied access to services and treatments they would have had in previous years.

This applies to elective treatments such as audiology, mental health, podiatry or pain management services.

To try and gain a better understanding of this issue, the Patients Association are running a survey to investigate whether patients across the country are experiencing problems of this sort.

They want to hear from as many patients as possible – including those that are not having problems accessing services and treatments – so that they can get a balanced picture.

The survey should only take a few minutes to complete and can be accessed at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ZRP9MGG

More details about the survey can be found on the Patients Association website: http://www.patients-association.com

Meet the Models

Filmed interviews of each our our ostomy Underwear & Swimwear Show Models are being released every week, you can hear why the show is so important to them, what they hope to achieve, and get to know them before you see them on the night!

See the Meet the Models pages for the full interviews

Ladies! Sign up for our free cycle event now!

We have places in this year's Cycletta events, female-only cycle rides in Whipsnade Zoo (11th Sept) and Tatton Park (2nd Oct). Entry is FREE, in return for a nominal fundraising donation. All riders who raise over £100 will receive a free Ostomy Lifestyle sports top!

Places are limited so sign up today!

For more information click here - see you there!

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