CLAIRE Rayner made an immeasurable difference to many people’s lives.
She gave them wise and caring advice through her role as an agony aunt, doing her best to guide and counsel those who wrote to national newspapers for help.
And she also put all her compassion and her formidable skills as both a nurse and as a journalist into campaigning for patients’ rights.
Claire championed the cause of compassion and dignity in our hospitals feeling, as many of us do, that it is a crucial element of patient care.
Though Claire died last year, her tireless work to raise the profile of patients’ rights continues.
Yesterday that campaigning spirit of hers was recognised as a new scholarship in her name was awarded for the first time by the University of Huddersfield.
Barbara Schofield, from Birkby, is a consultant nurse for older people and just the kind of person you can imagine Claire getting on with.
They would doubtless have shared views on how vital it is to have compassion in nursing and Barbara will study just whether it is possible for students to be taught the values of dignity and compassion in their treatment of patients.
Claire for one, you suspect, would have suggested that they can.
