Care UK awards reveal how its teams tackle new challenges

Feb. 6, 2013 - PRLog -- Each year, Care UK looks for examples of great care and dedication, for programmes that improve patients’ healthcare experience and wellbeing, and for initiatives that help the organisation even more able to deliver the improvements commissioners want to make.

The judges were not disappointed, with all eight categories having nominations of the highest standard, which not only reflected the diversity and talent of Care UK colleagues but also made the final decisions very tough.

The Great Care Award went to nurse John Robinson, whose work with inmates at HMP Grendon impressed not only the judges and his nominator, service manager Victoria Waite, but also the life-sentence prisoners, for his consistent care in difficult circumstances. A prisoner, who acknowledged that he had been challenging to work with, wrote to managers (in spite of having literacy problems) to say John was “able to see past our frustrations and treat us with respect… he sees us as people rather than offenders.”

Victoria said: “The majority of prisoners are serving life sentences. They are tough-minded, have little empathy and quite often a rigid mind-set. It is a testimony to John and the team that they are able to work so well with their patients, win their admiration and provide such outstanding healthcare.”

There were awards too for the team at Buckinghamshire Musculoskeletal Integrated Care service (MusIC) for their innovative work in improving services and slashing waiting times at their eight centres. Their colleagues George Ampaabeng and Venieva Marais from North East London NHS Treatment Centre won the Innovation Award for their work with surgeons to bring extra efficiency to the processes for hip and knee replacement operations. George and Veneva’s dedication has also helped to strengthen relationships with their team of surgeons to ensure the centre’s highest clinical standards are met.

Carol Chew, from Calderdale Out-of-Hours service, based at the Horne Street Health Centre, in Halifax, won the Outstanding Personal Contribution Award for her contribution to developing the service that provides medical cover to people in the Halifax area.

Carol, who retires soon, said: “When I first joined the out-of-hours GP service some nine years ago, my one goal was to ensure that patients within the area received a first class service from a team who believed strongly in what they were delivering and who had total commitment to the community. This award is a great honour and shows that the team and I have gone a long way to achieving that goal.”

The Quality Improvement Award went to Dr Rachel Broadley for her work at Southampton NHS Treatment Centre for her consistently positive approach to improving the management of major issues such as pain, the care of diabetic patients and other medical issues, including the after-effects of surgery or anaesthesia.

Judges were particularly impressed by her rigorous efforts to ensure the guidelines she has developed will be spread beyond her own workplace and into Care UK’s other NHS treatment centres and GP surgeries across the country.

And finally, the Information Excellence and Unsung Heroes Awards went to people working behind the scenes. Damir Kljajic won the information award for his work with team mate Nick Hall creating ‘dashboards’ to help their colleagues find information about services quickly, while Annette Burton was Care UK’s Unsung Hero for her crucial behind-the-scenes role as a medical coder at Will Adams NHS Treatment Centre.

Annette summed up the response of many of the nominees when she said: “I was surprised at being nominated and absolutely delighted when I found out I had won the Unsung Hero category. I would like to thank my colleagues for their kind words in putting me forward for the award.”

Care UK chief executive Mike Parish, who presented the awards, said: “Every year I am amazed at the number of excellent entries we receive. I am proud that our teams show such high levels of care and dedication to their patients and that they show such ingenuity and creativity in improving healthcare services.”