Three Homerton Hospital initiatives shortlisted for prestigious awards

Three teams at Homerton Hospital have been nominated for highly regarded healthcare awards for projects that help vulnerable people.

The speech and language department is shortlisted in the ‘Improving Care for Children and Young People Initiative of the Year’ category at the Health Service Journal’s (HSJ) Patient Safety Awards.

The HSJ has also put forward the hospital’s Covid-19 deterioration project in the ‘Deteriorating Patients and Rapid Response Initiative of the Year’ category.

The palliative rapid response team has also been recognised by the Royal College of Nursing’s (RCN) annual awards for ‘Community & General Practice Nursing’.

Catherine Pelley, Homerton’s chief nurse and director of governance, said: “Warm congratulations to all three teams for their nominations in these prestigious awards. Each initiative reflects a flexible and innovative approach to providing safe and high quality services to our most vulnerable patient groups during what has been the most challenging period in the history of the NHS.”

The speech and language team developed computer-based therapy for its Get Hackney Talking programme, which has been well received by children and families and has gained both local and national recognition. The initiative is being developed into a sustainable, ongoing service.

The Covid deterioration project, led by Dr Carlo Prina and Dr Yvonne Mitchell, was built to respond to a 600 per cent increase in cases last December and the increasing number of patients needing critical care. The team created an effective real-time triage system to identify patients with Covid who were going downhill. The hospital says the initiative prevented potentially serious setbacks for some of these patients and helped it allocate resources more efficiently.

In March last year, during the first wave of the pandemic, more and more seemingly stable patients were quickly deteriorating and dying at home, sometimes before the community team could attend. Led by practice development nurse Ronicah Makande, the palliative rapid response team created a service within 10 days that provided dedicated, uninterrupted, rapid end-of-life care by staff that could confidently navigate the challenges of the pandemic. People were seen within four hours of referral and given 24-hour support. Those who were scared to go to hospital or knew it wasn’t an option were able to explore their care options at home and the Homerton reports that their loved ones felt the treatment was as good as it would have been in hospital.

Winners for the HSJ awards will be announced at the Patient Safety Congress in Manchester in September. The dates and details for the RCN’s award ceremony will be confirmed later this year.