Top Continence Care L-R Karen Smith, Sharon Holroyd, Catherine Buss and Tracey Dinsmore. Middle the Lung Cancer Team. Bottom HOOP L-R Alexandra Birnie, Hannah Finch, Cath Briggs, Claire Dean

We have an amazing three teams shortlisted for the the Nursing Times  finals for  2017.

They are:

Hospital Out Of Hours (HOOP) - Team of the Year category.

The HOOP team was set up to assist our teams on wards provide more effective care during the nights, weekends and bank holidays. We recruited to, and expanded the night sister role and renamed it Clinical Coordinator. We also introduced the role of the Clinical Support Worker.

The old system of bleeping for doctors was replaced by a new electronic triage system.  Now the out of hours teams send an electronic request and this is triaged by a Clinical Coordinator. They assess who is best suited to respond either a Clinical Support Worker  who can provide cannulae and ECGs, or a Doctor. It means they get a quicker response and no longer spend lengthy times waiting for a doctor to respond to a bleep. This releases time for ward staff to be with patients.

Patient-focused lung cancer diagnostic pathway in the Cancer Nursing category. The lung cancer team have pioneered a new system which reduces the amounts of clinic visits a patient has to make if they wish.  All patients receive an info pack with everything they need to know and if they wish using this with support from our staff, they can choose to reduce the number of times they have to return to hospital. 

Continence Promotion - Educational Programme to highlight the essentials of care in the Continence Promotion and Care category.

The Continence team based at Beechwood Health Centre, Halifax,  has been holding  free training and education sessions for healthcare delivers across Calderdale. Their aim is to break the taboo surrounding the bowel and bladder conditions.  Lead nurse Sharon Holroyd, said: " I am very proud of what we do. There has been a massive change to improve the profile for the patients." She said their work was a "Cinderella" condition which wasn't often talked about. "Someone with a broken leg gets sympathy yet someone with these conditions is sometimes looked on with disgust." More than 300 healthcare professionals from residential homes, nursing homes, social care in Calderdale have attended their free sessions in 2016/17.

ALL three will now have to go before a panel to further explain about their pioneering work to deliver better care for patients later this year ahead of the NT 2017 grand final in November.