EastEnders' and Gavin and Stacey "dad", actor Larry Lamb presented our Helen Harris with her trophy at the Macmillan Professional Awards.

Our pioneering ED/AMU Palliative Care Project enabling us to deliver palliative care early in a patient's journey won the Innovation Category and afterwards Larry Lamb tweeted a "well done" to her.

The project ran from June 2017 to December 2018 and pioneered by Julie Wood  (who left CHFT earlier this year) and Helen Harris.  There was face to face judging, before a panel of experts, where Helen articulated the benefits of proactively delivering Specialist Palliative Care much earlier in the patient’s hospital stay.

Helen has had a lot of interest in the project from other Trusts who have been to visit Huddersfield and gain more understanding of the work. 

Helen said: "I was quietly confident we would win, because the data we collected was so strong and showed such clear patient and system benefits. Of course we were still delighted to hear our Project named as a winner! It's really lovely to have the work recognised again on the national stage (it won a Nursing Times Award last year) and to put end of life care squarely at the top of the agenda."

How challenging can it be caring for cancer patients and their families? Specialist Palliative Care Teams look after patients with cancer or any other life limiting disease. Of course there are challenges inherent in this kind of work but with good assessment, compassionate communication and careful planning, patients and families tell us they feel supported and reassured. The biggest challenge is to encourage and support all staff to play their part in end of life care, including having "difficult" conversations with patients and families. We also need to continue to educate society at large that we can and must talk about death and dying.