An evening of exceptional achievement for RCHT’s apprentices
It was another outstanding night for the Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust at the 2025 Cornwall Apprenticeship Awards, with the high-profile awards evening celebrating exceptional achievement across 18 categories.
The ceremony took place on Friday 07 February. RCHT had six shortlisted nominations, including for Large Employer category for the second year running.
On the night, shortlisted colleagues from RCHT were highly commended across several categories. These included Harry Cranstone (Accountancy), Safiya Hicks (Healthcare and Early Years) and Lilita Miller (Nursing Associate). RCHT was highly commended for the second year running in the Large Employer category.
Among the winners were Tom Heap, who won the award for the Healthcare and Early Years category, and Sarah Collett, who won for the Nursing and Clinical category, both of which are new awards for 2025.
Nicola Pryke, Apprenticeship Lead for RCHT, said:
“It’s been fantastic to see the success at this year’s awards, which is an outstanding endorsement for all of us at RCHT. To have our apprentices excel in these new categories, becoming the very first to win these awards, and to have so many of our shortlisted apprentices be highly commended on the night, is a great achievement. We really hope this success will continue to help us to attract more people to take on an apprenticeship at RCHT and across the wider NHS.”
The ‘Nursing and Clinical’ and ‘Healthcare and Early Years’ categories were added to this year’s event to reflect the recent growth and impact of apprenticeships in these sectors. The new categories join the highly popular ‘Academic Mentor’ and ‘Workplace Mentor of the Year’ categories. These were added in 2024 to recognise those who offer apprentices exceptional levels of support to achieve strong starts to their future careers.
On the Royal Cornwall Hospitals being highly recommended as Large Employer of the Year for the second year running, Nikki added:
“This amazing achievement once again highlights the great level of work we’ve seen across RCHT, including from our apprentices, the mentors who support them, the supervisors, and my own colleagues in the Learning and Development team. Any awards success is a tribute to the dedicated work of our apprentices, as well as to how well we support them, and how well we support other organisations across Cornwall. Working closely and collaboratively with the apprenticeship training providers has also been instrumental in ensuring our apprentices have the best experience.”