Quality awards: celebrating excellence and innovation in north central and east London

The third annual HEE NCEL quality awards were held on Thursday 11 February in London. The awards celebrate excellence and innovation in health and healthcare across the north central and east London area, and are open to any individual or organisation that has received funding for education, training or staff development.

The awards have gone from strength-to-strength each year, with the quality of entries for 2015 being exceptionally high. With this in mind, HEE NCEL would like to commend all of the entries for their hard work.

There have been many very deserving winners over the past few years, and in most cases the prizes have helped them develop themselves and their services further.

Congratulations to all of the worthwhile projects and hard-working individuals that have entered.

Winning and highly commended entrants

Service transformation through education

Winner: Quality improvement programme, East London NHS Foundation Trust

ELFT’s quality improvement programme is an ongoing project aimed at transforming the culture within the trust to one of continuous improvement and learning, thereby improving patients’ experiences and outcomes.

Highly commended: Sepsis Recognition and Care - Quality Improvement at Homerton University Hospital’s Emergency Department, Dr Manab Mohanty & Dr Neil Spencer
To combat sepsis in their patch, the team at Homerton developed a multidisciplinary sepsis training programme across the emergency department. The programme provided training for all staff and also produced a ‘sepsis awareness card’ that was distributed to all emergency department staff and local London Ambulance Service crews for guidance.

Innovation in healthcare education and training

Winner: CitySCaPE (City Simulated Community and Practice Experience), City University London - Lorna Saunder, Sandra Partington, Steve McCombe

CitySCaPE has the key aim of improving service user led care to people with learning disabilities. The resource uses videos, audio interviews, text, quizzes, interactive images and web resources to take students through a simulated experience of working with people who have learning disabilities.

Highly commended: National curriculum in child health for medical undergraduates, UCL Institute of Child Health - Hannah Jacobs

The first ever national curriculum in child health for medical undergraduates was developed through collaboration across various medical schools to streamline the way that child health is taught in the UK.

Excellence in widening participation and wider workforce development

Joint winner: Building Bridges Partnership - Refugee Council, Refugee Assessment & Guidance Unit

The Building Bridges Partnership has been successful in encouraging more refugee healthcare professionals into healthcare careers, education and training.

Joint winner: Participation in pre-registration nurse training for health care assistants, Middlesex University - Marion Taylor & team

Middlesex University has developed a programme to enable more health care assistants to achieve registered nurse status.

Collaboration and partnership education

Winner: Collaborative learning groups, Barnet Community Education Provider Network (CEPN) - Mandy Caret, Gill Parsons and Anita Patel

Barnet CEPN’s collaborative learning groups are small locality based groups covering the whole of Barnet. The groups meet regularly with the aim of learning together by using patient scenarios with well-defined learning objectives. 98 percent of participants said they had gained something from taking part.

Highly commended: MH mentoring in pre-registration training - London Association of Mental Health Nursing Practice (LAMP)

LAMP is a London-wide practice education network that was set up to provide a new model of collaborative working. Representatives from member organisations meet regularly to undertake joint project work to improve the training in clinical practice of student nurses.

Promoting Healthy Living through Education and Training

Winner: iCOPE Psychological Therapies & Wellbeing Service, Camden & Islington NHS Foundation Trust

iCOPE is a psychological therapies and wellbeing service offering a range of brief interventions in primary care to patients with common mental health problems. The service also works with the local community to educate, demystify and de-stigmatise common mental health problems by holding talks led by members of the multidisciplinary team.

Excellence in inter-professional education and training

Winner: Mandy Claret and the Barnet CEPN Faculty of Facilitators, Barnet Community Education Provider Network (CEPN)

Barnet CEPN has brought together people from health, social care and other parts of the workforce to learn jointly about how to support people with complex conditions. The team has successfully delivered a very useful package of learning by getting participants to work more closely together and has had a positive impact on the care provided to people with long term conditions.

Patient and carer-centred education

Winner: Training workshops for academic clinical researchers, UCL & UCLH Joint Research Office - Ros Yu, PPI & Communications Manager

The patient and public Involvement team developed training workshops for academic clinical researchers to involve patients and the public in the design and conduct of clinical research from the start. This approach has been highly successful in training more than 250 researchers over two years across northeast and north central London.

Highly commended: ME first project, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust

ME first is an innovative education package that aims to improve communication between children and young people and healthcare professionals by improving the knowledge, skills and confidence of healthcare professionals when they are communicating with them.

Trainer of the year

Winner: Dr Kshitij Mankad, Great Ormond Street Hospital

Dr Mankad is a trainer of radiology registrars and his enthusiasm often draws non-radiology trainees to the field. He plays an integral part in the annual meeting which is an important educational event for radiology registrars and gives regular lectures and question sessions.

Highly commended: Dr Laurence Hommel, Barnet GP vocational training scheme

Dr Hommel is an outstanding GP trainer, educator, doctor and patient advocate. As a senior GP partner he created a healthy learning and training environment at his GP surgery. He has been invaluable in training many GPs in north London, who have gone on to develop their own successful careers, including becoming fellow GP educators.

Student of the year

Winner: John Lawlor, City University London

As part of a work based elective module, John created an “Introduction to Transgender”. The project focused on social, legal and mental health aspects of transgender people. John has demonstrated an innovative approach in addressing a current and very real issue within health care.

Highly commended: Emily Garrett, UCL Medical School

Emily has made excellent use of her training to improve patient care. Her hard work has culminated in the production of two UK and seven international poster presentations & one published paper in the last 12 months. This has included a peanut & tree nut identification project that helped families and medical students have better understanding about nut allergies and how to manage them, and she received awards for her research.

Trainee of the year

Winner: Martin Hirsch, Barts Health NHS Trust

Martin has been piloting a quality improvement scheme within the obstetrics and gynaecology training program. Having worked a previous unit where manual vacuum aspiration (MVA) was used to manage miscarriage, Martin sought to implement a change at The Royal London Hospital, increasing MVA. This led to improved patient care, reduced hospital admissions and saved money.

Highly commended: Harpoonam Kalsi, Restorative Dentistry Eastman Dental Hospital

Harpoonam is a restorative registrar at the Eastman Dental Hospital. She has exceeded her training requirements with her work establishing an outreach service at the hospital, aimed at moving patient care closer to home.

Apprentice of the year

Winner: Kaylie Delvin, Bart’s Health NHS Trust

Kaylie is an active member of the team that promotes careers in health care through the East London Health Careers project. She has been tireless in visiting schools and colleges to speak to students, as well as helping to source new placements for students across Barts Health.

Highly commended: Luke McCarthy-Jones, Homerton University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

Luke was part of the first healthcare assistant apprenticeship programme at Homerton. He has worked hard to overcome his own challenges and has developed into a brilliant healthcare assistant. Luke has Asperger’s Syndrome, which meant that he found the academic aspects particularly difficult - to have successfully completed the programme is a huge achievement.