South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust is celebrating after its Practice Education Team collected the Technology and Data in Nursing category at the Nursing Times Awards 2024.
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Fran Davies, Past Master for Worshipful Company of Nurses, with STSFT Practice Education Team members Kelsey Dunning, Rachel O’Connor, Julie Manampan, Adam Remmer, Clare Adams-Graham, Barbara Goodfellow, Lesley Carlton, Eleanor Dungca, Laura Smith, Dawn Garrett, and Laura McGuire.
The team provides education for nurses, midwives and allied health professionals, as well as healthcare support workers and students.
The virtual reality work has created additional innovative learning environments for students. It has boosted the Trust’s capacity to offer student placements and offers a better training experience.
The Nursing Times judges said: “This project exemplifies the transformative power of technology in education and serves as a model for expanding clinical placements.”
Five other projects at the Trust are also due to find out if they are winners in awards which champion innovation.
It is also among three Trust teams shortlisted for the Bright Ideas in Health Awards, which is a regional celebration led by Health Innovation North East and North Cumbria.
It is in the Innovation in Clinical Education category at the ceremony, which will be held on Thursday, November 21.
Also shortlisted in the same awards is the Trust’s Speech and Language Therapy (SALT) Team, which is on the shortlist as Innovation Champion.
The SALT team is being recognised for its work to create a cookbook with head and neck cancer patients to help them recover and for hosting a social eating café and a stammering group for children. They have also launched an urgent clinic for ear, nose and throat (ENT) patients, they also developed training for others and lead the Mouthcare Team.
The team also works to reduce health inequalities, widening access to services including young people on the edge of care, and promotes continuous improvement through events, case studies, posters and podcasts.
Meanwhile, the Trust’s Assessment of Breathing Clinic is in the Innovation and Improvement in Reducing Healthcare Inequalities Award.
The Trust is also nominated for three titles in the national Smarter Working Live Awards 2024, which will also be held on the same evening.
Its Innovation Team is shortlisted in the Innovation as a Service Category for its work to support colleagues as they improve ways of working or come up with solutions to problems.
The Cancer Information Hub is in the Digital Inclusion Award section. The hub is an online resource for patients and their loved ones and offers videos and information about conditions, treatment, the journey they face following diagnosis, support available and more.
The creation of the Shoulder Reduction Bench is in the running in the Small-Scale, Big Impact section. The project was led by Sunderland Royal Hospital A&E consultants Ala Mohammed and Phil Dowson, who adapted a piece of gym kit to help treat people with dislocated shoulders quickly and without the need for sedation. The invention is now on sale to hospitals across the world.
Mark Taylor is the Trust’s Head of Innovation.
He said: “We are delighted to see our Practice Education Team collect the Nursing Times Award and excited to see they’re up for another award for their virtual reality work.
They’ve shown how technology can be used to help people develop their careers and build on their skills as they deliver care.
All of these teams shortlisted have used innovation to drive improvements, work in a better way or give our patients a better experience, sometimes all three.
I want to thank all those who have supported these teams and projects.
I’m very proud of my own team after it was shortlisted. We’ve been working hard to support innovators within our Trust over the last three years.
It has seen us help support innovators, protect their intellectual property and support their projects, as well as a lot of work behind the scenes which has all had a positive impact on our Trust.
We’ve also been helping to secure funding, have launched our own grant scheme and been busy working alongside partners to bring in their expertise.
All of these help bring on more projects to help our colleagues and those we care for.”
More information about the Trust’s innovation work can be found through the Innovation section of its website.
