26 | Nursing in Practice | Winter 2023
2023 GENERAL PRACTICE AWARDS
Nursing Team of the Year
The General Practice Awards in London on 8 December saw seven fantastic entries shortlisted for Nurse / Nursing Team of the Year . The event highlighted the innovation , dedication and passion of teams and individuals across the UK . Here we meet those on the shortlist and announce the winner
WINNER
BIRLEY HEALTH CENTRE NURSING TEAM , SHEFFIELD The nurses in this stellar team really do go the extra mile . The seven team members , led by Dawn Varney , pride themselves on putting patients at the heart of everything they do .
They delivered extra Covid and flu clinics not only for their own patients but also those of local practices struggling with capacity . The team also arranged the use of a council bus to help patients get to and from practice .
The Sheffield practice had its best year for the QOF , due in no small part to the efforts of the nursing team . Cervical screening , foot checks and baby vaccination targets were all ‘ smashed ’.
Ms Varney has established regular wellbeing chats with the team and set up monthly face-to-face meetings with the network team , leading to positive changes in areas such as asthma and COPD . She has represented the practice and network in discussions across the local integrated care board .
Colleague Karen Howsham is hypertension lead , and the pair have taken over much of this work from the GPs . Ms Howsham is a nurse prescriber and takes care of follow-ups , including titrating medicines with guidance from the clinical director . This has seen the practice improve its QOF hypertension indicators .
Practice manager Sam Fellowes said the recognition by the award reflected a culture of ‘ accountability , mutual trust and working as a team ’.
The award was presented by actor Miles Jupp at the 2023 General Practice Awards ceremony in December .
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DARWEN HEALTHCARE NURSING TEAM , LANCASHIRE The Darwen nursing team provides evidence-based holistic care to patients , with staff ‘ incredibly passionate ’ about helping people .
‘ The nursing team at Darwen Healthcare are amazing ,’ said the vice-chair of the patient participation group . ‘ They are caring , understanding , have bags of empathy and are always upskilling and obtaining more knowledge for the benefit of their patients , showing just how much they care .’
Each team member provides leadership , from HCAs to ANPs , and all have been involved in leading qualityimprovement initiatives in hypertension case finding , pre-diabetes and diabetes , osteopenia and osteoporosis and child immunisation , as well as optimising bowel and cervical smear screening .
Upskilling of other team members has freed up time for practice nurses to focus on complex chronic disease .
Thanks to the team ’ s work on pre-diabetes education only 2 % of pre-diabetic patients progressed to diabetes in 2021 / 22 , and less than 5 % in 2022 / 23 .
They have also made great strides in spirometry and FeNO testing , and maintained high levels of child immunisation uptake .
A robust process for shingles vaccination saw 66 % of all eligible patients vaccinated in 2021 / 23 . This rose further to 71 % in 2022 / 23 .
The team ’ s dedication to cervical smear awareness weeks achieved participation rates of 80 % and 81 %.