Colleagues in our palliative care team were in jubilant mood after reaching the finals of the International Journal of Palliative Nursing Awards ceremony on Monday night.

They were runners-up in the  multi-disciplinary team working category and up against entries from all over the world in the awards backed by Macmillan Cancer Support at the ceremony in London.

Michelle Lake, one of the team, said:“The judging panel said we could be proud of our achievements improving care for our patients through working together and, as a team, we really our proud of ourselves and each other.”

The awards celebrate achievement and excellence in the work of palliative care and judges were looking for initiative and enterprise with the care of patients being paramount. They singled out "exemplary teamwork" for comment.

Michelle, explains: "In the beginning key people came together to discuss verification of expected death and how the work could be  joined up and merged to form cohesive partnership. This enabled us to pool  resources and share experiences to create a unified strategy for the policy and educational approach.

"The core group consisted of CHFT - an acute trust - , a local hospice and a community partnership provider. Within our individual groups we sought to work with like-minded colleagues to create the innovative training package for all."

We were aware of gaps in knowledge and understanding around the training and worked with partners such as the Coroner , GPs, funeral directors, clinical commissioning groups, a registrar, faiths groups, and volunteer groups to fill the gaps. 

The core team has successfully trained in excess of 100 nurses providing good geographical coverage across the relevant organisations. This has led to a improvement in quality of care which is evidenced by case studies.