76-year-old nurse from Manchester will be named the winner of Good Morning Britain´s 1 Million Minutes Dame Barbara Windsor Award, in a programme broadcast to the nation on Christmas Day morning.
Gladys Nhkola, who moved to Hulme from her native South Africa in 2002, received the award from GMB presenter Pip Thomson. The GMB team surprised Gladys at Withington’s Monet Lodge, which cares for people with dementia, giving her the full red carpet treatment and serenading her with a gospel choir.
“The award came as a complete surprise, I had no idea what was happening,” said Gladys. “I went into work and there was a red carpet, and then the choir started, and they told me I’d won an award. I was actually speechless!”
Gladys was singled out for the honour after award judges read how she regularly worked 60 hours a week during the height of the pandemic to support her patients at Monet Lodge, a specialist dementia hospital run by adult health and social care charity Making Space. When restrictions meant patients were separated from their loved ones, Gladys volunteered for extra shifts to help combat their loneliness – all despite being in at-risk group herself.
“I should have been shielding according to my age,” she said. “But I don’t have any underlying health conditions, I was healthy and I always felt safe – we always had full PPE at Monet Lodge, we were well looked after.
“But our patients couldn’t see their relatives or friends, and that was very hard to watch. For people with advanced dementia, all the new measures were confusing and upsetting. It was very clear in their faces how much they missed their loved ones.”
Gladys’ selfless actions came as no surprise to her colleagues, who are all too familiar with the compassion and dignity she displays.
“Gladys thoroughly deserves to be recognised with this award, she really is such a wonderful inspiration to everyone here,” said Monet’s manager, Meena Patel. “Being recognised in such a public way is a very fitting way of saying thank you for everything that she does to help others. She was absolutely stunned when she found out, she couldn’t even speak! It was such an exciting day, we’re all thrilled.”
Rachel Peacock is the CEO of Making Space. “Gladys has an inherent sense of humanity, compassion, love and understanding,” she said. “She never stops developing herself personally, her clinical knowledge is vast and she is a great motivator, as well as a calming presence for colleagues, residents and families.
“Despite losing friends to Covid her commitment to nursing has never wavered. She truly is one in a million.”
