NURSES TRIUMPH IN NHS INNOVATION ‘OSCARS’
Pictured receiving their Award for Innovation in Acute Care at the MidTECH awards are (from left) Kerry Holt, Jo Thomas, Rachael Trevitt and Marie Ramsbottom. The award was presented by Kevin Calder, of Mills & Reeve (left), and Alan Wenban-Smith, chairman of MidTECH (right).
Sandy Clayton-Kent, senior school nurse, from NHS Warwickshire Community Health, who developed the board game, was presented with the MidTECH Award for Innovation in Prevention and Community Care – and a £4,000 cheque towards further development of her project.
Senior school nurse Sandy Clayton-Kent, from NHS Warwickshire Community Health pictured receiving her Award for Innovation in Prevention and Community Care.
The award was presented by Kevin Calder, of Mills & Reeve (left), and Alan Wenban-Smith, chairman of MidTECH (right).
Meanwhile, a team of nurses at Royal Wolverhampton Hospitals NHS Trust (picture at the top of the page) – Kerry Holt, Rachael Trevitt, Jo Thomas and Marie Ramsbottom – carried off the MidTECH Award for Innovation in Acute Care, and a cheque for £4,000 to spend on expanding their Paediatric Triage System.
BBC Radio WM presenter Ed Doolan announced the awards at an Oscars-style ceremony at Birmingham’s Botanical Gardens on Thursday November 26th.
‘Ones to Watch’ awards – each with £1,000 prizes – went to Richard King, locum consultant orthopaedic surgeon at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust, and Rachel Brazier, project manager, of University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust.
Mr King has devised a revolutionary new wrist splint to make sure broken bones align themselves properly as they heal, while Rachel’s team’s innovation uses an encrypted Blackberry device to quickly match up potential liver donors and transplant recipients.
NHS Birmingham East and North was ‘highly commended’ for BENeFIT, led by Andrew Bull, assistant director of health improvement, for a scheme that encourages staff to assess their own health, set goals and get fitter, with the help of pedometers that measure how many steps they take each day.
The winners, ‘ones to watch’ and ‘highly commended’ were among a total of 12 finalists for the awards, sponsored by NHS West Midlands and law firm Mills & Reeve.
“The projects are all helping to bring real benefits to patients and staff across the West Midlands and prove how innovation and invention is thriving in NHS organisations throughout the region,” said David Gleaves, chief executive of MidTECH.
“Each of the finalists would have been worthy winners – but for our judges, the two projects led by nurses stood out particularly.”
Sandy Clayton-Kent, winner of the Award for Innovation in Primary Care, said: “Young people who I work with in Warwickshire alerted me to the need for education about body piercing when they told me how some of them had picked up infections after piercings.
“So I worked with youngsters at Kineton High School to develop a board game, showing a man’s body with various piercings and rules, questions and props to help teenagers to make informed decisions if they are considering having a piercing.”
Kerry Holt, paediatric advanced nurse practitioner at Royal Wolverhampton Hospitals NHS Trust, said of her team’s Award for Innovation in Acute Care: “We are absolutely delighted to have won and the prize will help us to develop our Paediatric Triage system even further.
“There are triage tools for adults attending A&E and other emergency departments but ours is designed specifically for children, so that staff can assess how quickly young patients need to be seen for various different conditions.”
MidTECH is part of a national network of NHS innovation hubs, established by the Department of Health to identify, protect and commercialise innovative ideas from the NHS.
This includes helping to patent or otherwise protect the ideas, linking up with industries that may help to commercialise them – and aiming to ensure that a share of the profits goes to the inventor and the NHS Trust where the projects were developed.
Details of other finalists in the competition, which attracted more than 60 entries this year, follow in the ‘Notes to Editors’.
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Notes to Editors:
Other finalists in the competition, who each received certificates, were:
- Danielle Smith, a PhD student, from Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust, for an educational project to help patients with irregular heartbeats to improve their understanding of the risks and benefits of blood thinning medication and reduce their risk of stroke.
- Mubashir Cheema, registrar in plastic surgery, from University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, for a multilingual booklet to help health workers to communicate well with patients coming into the Accident & Emergency Department with hand injuries.
- Karen Hansford, professional lead for school nursing, and Jane Brown, professional lead for dietetics, of South Staffordshire PCT, for the ‘Healthy Kid5 Pack’, an interactive package for schools to teach children about living a healthy lifestyle.
- Ruth Williams, acting rehabilitation manager, of Sandwell PCT, for ‘In my Own Mind I’m Talking’, a DVD and booklet to help patients with communication and swallowing problems.
- Professor Celia Moss, consultant dermatologist, of Birmingham Children’s Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, for BEBS, a new system to help in the monitoring of patients treated for epidermolysis bullosa, a rare condition in which the skin falls off.
- Bernadette Parker, head of the Centre for Hearing and Balance Disorders at Unversity Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust, for a CD-ROM to help audiologists treating people with hearing problems.
- Nicholas Price, consultant ophthalmologist, and Bhogal Bhogal, optometrist, of Royal Wolverhampton Hospitals NHS Trust, for a new device to help surgeons to make a highly accurate cut of the membrane surrounding the lens of the eye.
