Organising the cardiac catch up in our department took me back in a period of time when I was an Infection Control Nurse back home. I remember that I’d regularly create similar activities but mostly geared towards improving staff compliance to hospital policies and procedures, health promotion, disease prevention and enhancing client satisfaction. This time, it’s about catching up and nourishing the camaraderie within the entire cardiology team.

I never thought that I’d miss the stress of doing it. It was extra challenging because there’s no allotted budget for the activity. So, we had to find creative ways to support the simple event. In addition, there was an emergency case and back to back primary angioplasties in the Heart Assessment Centre while we were doing it. Nevertheless, I feel like it was successfully implemented and everyone had a good time.

The theme of the activity is a Curry Day Cook off, which meant that everyone one is encouraged to cook curry inspired dishes and share it with everyone. The guest judge was by Dr. Iqbal Malik, one of the top interventional consultant cardiologists in London.

There were 4 entries and I joined the competition! Got the second place spot and I felt a little proud because It was my first time to cook vegetable kare-kare. The dish I made does not actually have curry in it. Kare – Kare was created years ago in the Philippines because of the Indian soldiers on British ships trying to recreate curry far from home using local annatto seeds and peanuts. Since then, it became popular.

Everyone from the cardiology team brought a variety of food and treats as well. Since it is spring time, we tried our best to have a festive and serene ambience by putting white sheer curtains, plants, flowers and creative food plating. We also made marigold garlands to give a little nod to the diwali celebration.

The main objective of the activity is to bring everyone together within the cardiology department and extend our working relationships beyond handing over patients or checking up free bed spaces. Surely, food has been an effective means of breaking communication barriers and boosting the team spirit in any type of environment.