A Black Country-based Consultant will be rubbing shoulders with celebrity TV medic Dr Hilary Jones when he leads the judging at a national competition this week.
Dr Richard Jerrom, Consultant Dermatologist and Mohs Surgeon at Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust and The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust (RWT), is one of two head judges at the Quality in Care Dermatology awards ceremony 2023, while Dr Hilary is presenting the evening.
The Consultant, who has been with the Trusts since May 2022, has been one of the panel judging the finalists for the competition. The awards ceremony takes place in London on Thursday at the Royal College of Physicians.
As a lead judge for the first time this year, Dr Jerrom, 34, will join Dr Hilary on stage, announcing winners of his categories and having photographs with the finalists. Dr Jerrom has been involved in the programme from its initiation as part of the steering committee.
Dr Hilary, 70, has been a resident health expert on national TV for three decades, appearing regularly on daytime shows such as GMTV, Daybreak, Lorraine and Good Morning Britain and was awarded the MBE in 2020.
Dr Jerrom, who has judged the event for the last two years, will meet a media team at a brief pre-ceremony event with a question and answer session before photographs are taken and short videos are presented on stage.
“I enjoy the role as its purpose is to share and celebrate good practice,” said Dr Jerrom, who divides his time between Walsall Healthcare, RWT and University NHS Hospitals Leicester, where he also has a substantive post. “The programme highlights innovation and new approaches to dermatological clinical practice, patient support and teaching.
“It is a nice opportunity to learn what ideas are being tried elsewhere in the UK and Ireland to overcome challenges and often there are gems that can be taken and implemented locally.
“I also like the fact it brings recognition to teams and individuals who go the extra mile. I enjoy reading the entries, finding out what work is being done and then meeting the finalists.”
Last year the event took place virtually due to the death of the Queen the week before, 12 months after the inaugural event, which Dr Jerrom attended.
To keep things fair, neither RWT or Walsall have any entries in the competition. Dr Jerrom said: “I could enter my own teams and they would be judged by other judging members, but I don’t really feel comfortable being involved with the programme and personally entering my own teams, despite them being well deserving of consideration.”
Dr Jerrom is on the editorial board of Dermatology in Practice, the UK’s longest-running review-based journal dedicated to dermatology. He also used to be on the committee for Psychodermatology UK and facilitated a partnership between the two programmes in 2020.
As a result of this, there is a category for ‘Psychological Impact of Skin Disease Conditions’ – one of the categories Dr Jerrom’s judging group assessed, as well as ‘Dermatology Education Programmes for Healthcare Professionals’.
Dr Jerrom, who completed his Consultant training in 2020, grew up in Warwickshire and lives in Fazeley, near Tamworth.