British Journal of Nursing - Nurses deserve to be honoured in the NHS Parliamentary Awards

Abstract

Emeritus Professor Alan Glasper, University of Southampton, explains why nurses should be among those recognised in the 2019 NHS Parliamentary Awards that reward staff who have made a difference to patient care

To celebrate the 70th anniversary of the NHS, the NHS Parliamentary Awards were developed in 2017 to formally recognise the contribution made by those that work in and alongside the NHS in England. These awards are now an annual event to formally acknowledge the effort that nurses and others put into making the NHS a success for the citizens of England (NHS England, 2019a).

As the potential recipients of the awards will be judged by members of parliament (MPs), the scheme provides an opportunity for NHS trusts and other healthcare organisations in the NHS to keep their local MPs fully engaged with the work that they do and innovations that they make through their staff, many of whom perform above and beyond the call of duty.

The Government recognises that the successful implementation of the NHSLong Term Plan will lie in the hands of individuals and teams who have to convert the commitments outlined in the plan into action across all fields of practice. The nursing workforce is pivotal to the success or otherwise of the aspirations of the plan (NHS England, 2019b).

MPs in all constituencies in England are currently preparing for the 2019 awards and are seeking nominations from health organisations. They are interested in being informed about those NHS staff members who have made innovations in care delivery and who have made a significant contribution to how their local NHS performs and in providing excellent care for service users. Nurses, midwives, nursing associates and healthcare support workers who provide care to patients every day of the year, work to bring the rhetoric of the NHS plan to fruition. They therefore deserve to be recognised for their contribution as none of these ambitions for the NHS would be possible without them and the other staff who make up the NHS workforce in England.

Ten award categories

The NHS Parliamentary Awards are configured in 10 categories, including a lifetime achievement award. Successful staff members will be invited to parliament to receive their awards. In 2018, more than 750 nominations were put forward from individual MPs. The 10 categories are:

The Excellence in Healthcare Award. This award has been designed to honour an individual or team who enhance or make innovations in the care of people with long-term conditions such as heart disease, stroke, cancer and respiratory conditions. For example, this could be through working with patients and their families in developing new and effective interventions to help people stay well

The Excellence in Mental Health Care Award. This award will recognise an individual staff member or a team within the field of mental health who has worked across interagency or organisational boundaries to develop new and effective services to help people living with mental health problems in their community. This might include working with communities to tackle stigma and prejudice and health inequalities, especially for hard-to-reach groups such as homeless people

The Excellence in Urgent and Emergency Care Award. This award seeks to honour an individual or team that has made improvements to how the NHS treats people who have serious life-threatening conditions or injuries. This might involve a nurse or doctor in the hospital emergency department or an ambulance service paramedic who has made improvements in how the NHS treats people who need urgent care

The Excellence in Primary Care Award. This award recognises that primary care services are the ‘front door’ of the NHS and that this involves GPs, district nurses, health visitors and sexual health clinic staff, among others. The aim of this award is to promote strategies that help keep patients healthy in their own homes and prevent or mitigate hospital admission. This might include, for example, interagency working that results in more integrated care plans

The Future NHS Award. This award has been designed to reward an individual or team that has successfully used data and digital technology in providing better and more convenient access to services and perhaps in the provision of enhanced patient information. For example, digital technology could be harnessed through the use of Skype, which is one of a number of telecommunications software products that allow practitioners to talk with their patients via computers, tablets and mobile devices (Glasper, 2019)

The Health Equalities Award. This is a new award for 2019 and it aims to identify nurses and others who have addressed health inequalities within healthcare provision. They may have done so by motivating different groups and organisations within the care community to reduce health inequalities and prevent ill health in their local population. This might involve innovations in the development of new services for groups that traditionally struggle to access the NHS, such as travellers, where nurses can play a play a key part as role models in challenging prejudice and discrimination (Van Kleemput, 2010)

The Care and Compassion Award. This award has been designed to reward any member of the healthcare team who has used their skills to ensure that patients undergoing treatment receive care and compassion. This can be demonstrated in a number of ways. For example, it might be awarded to a nurse who makes improvements to a care environment to make it more dementia friendly (McKeown et al, 2010)

The Wellbeing at Work Award. This is also a new award introduced for 2019. It has been designed to recognise that professional carers also need care. It is vital that staff are supported and that employers have the right procedures in place to offer them help when they need it. For the NHS Long Term Plan to succeed, there needs to be sufficient nursing staff who actually have the time to fulfil their obligations to the patients they care for without endangering their own health. For example, this new award could be given to someone who helps develop safe, confidential, non-stigmatising services for staff to turn to when they are struggling. Healthcare organisations such as NHS trusts should recognise the need for and make burnout intervention programmes available to their employees, including nurses (Awa et al, 2010)

The Volunteer of the Year. This is also a new category of award for 2019 and has been formulated to reward those members of the public who are healthcare volunteers and who give their time generously to the NHS. This might be awarded to someone who has played a major role in fundraising for an NHS trust to improve facilities for children with cancer, for example

The Lifetime Achievement Award. This award has been designed to acknowledge the contribution of a person who has worked within a health or care setting for 40 years or more and who has left a legacy.

Discussion

NHS England is seeking to reward people who make the NHS what it is. MPs want to hear about outstanding individuals and teams such as nurses who have demonstrably made an impact on NHS care. Each MP is able to submit one nomination per category and local health and care organisations can also recommend individuals or teams to MPs to nominate. MPs will be asked to provide answers to the following questions on the application forms, which will be applied for all categories except the Lifetime Achievement Award:

What has been done? MPs will have to provide information on the improvements that have been made, why they have been made and by whom

Who benefited? MPs are asked to provide details of who benefited from the innovation and to what extent this was successful in changing practice

What happens next? MPs are asked to describe in detail how the innovation is being further developed at local, regional or national level to benefit more patients and/or staff (NHS England, 2019a).

Nominations for each category opened on 5 March 2019 and close on 26 April 2019 and the national shortlist will be announced on 25 June 2019, with an award ceremony scheduled for 10 July.

Excellence and good ideas

In 2018, Sian Dennison, the Lead Cancer Nurse at Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust, was awarded the Excellence in Cancer Care award. She had been nominated because her peers valued her positive, caring approach, which had enabled a progressive culture within her team, including the establishment of patient cancer groups and the refurbishment of the end-of-life care rooms (NHS England, 2019c).

To recognise contributions to excellence in patient care a number of trusts such as the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust now use so-called ‘shout-out boards’. These bulletin boards are used to highlight the achievements of individual staff by peers and colleagues and are also used as a way of saying thank you to someone who has provided help and support during a particular shift. Such shout-out boards are perceived to be good for morale and at the same time honour those that do not seek reward for doing a job that they enjoy (University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay, 2016). Perhaps local MPs can gain inspiration from examining these shout-out boards?

Similarly, an idea put forward by a group of nursing undergraduates to introduce yellow lids for water jugs to identify those patients who need their fluids monitored has now been introduced in several hospitals (BBC News, 2019).

Conclusion

These are just a few examples of the ingenuity nurses have shown in solving patient problems throughout the history of the NHS. There are many nurses in the NHS who never get nominated for awards, some ‘hiding their light under a bushel’. It is important that individuals, hospitals and trusts put forward their colleagues for these prestigious awards.

KEY POINTS

NHS Parliamentary Awards developed in 2017 have now become an annual event and will formally acknowledge the effort that nurses and others put into making the NHS a success.

MPs in all English constituencies are preparing for the 2019 awards and are interested in being informed about those NHS staff members who have made significant contributions to how their local NHS performs

The NHS Parliamentary Awards are configured in 10 categories which includes a lifetime achievement award

Each MP is able to submit one nomination per category and local health and care organisations can also recommend individuals or teams they would like their MP to nominate