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Nursing staff from Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust have been shortlisted for two prestigious national awards after providing exemplary care for frail elderly patients and younger patients with cancer during the Covid19 pandemic.

The team, from the Brearley 6 ward, a care of the elderly ward at the Northern General Hospital, has been named as finalists in the Nursing Times’ Care of Older People category.

Whilst the Trust’s teenage and young adult cancer service are also in the running for the Team of the Year, Cancer Nursing and Children’s Services Award.

Their work has been chosen from hundreds of entries submitted from NHS organisations across the country in the annual Nursing Times Awards which are now in their 30th year.

Brearley 6 was the first ward at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to be made into a Covid-19 cohort ward.

Over an 11-week period this transformation enabled the other remaining care of elderly wards at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals to mostly function as Covid-19 free areas, protecting staff and patients from the virus.

As well as effectively managing the specific care needs of highly vulnerable patients during a challenging period of time, staff ensured communication with relatives and carers who were unable to visit was made as easy as possible.

The teenage and young adult cancer service at Weston Park Cancer Centre has been shortlisted for an award for their fantastic partnership work with other health and social care teams to help one particular young teenager suffering with an incurable and complex cancer live as well as possible in her final months, and fulfil her wish to die at home.

In the absence of national guidance on care for this specific group of patients at the end of their life, the team brought together the experiences of children and adult services to provide a bespoke package of care for the teenager. This involved organising frequent meetings with individuals and teams from 11 different specialisms including inpatient and community pharmacy services, child and adult hospices, GPs, and community nursing teams to ensure the individual’s complex care needs and preferred place of death was met. Since then, the pathway of care has successfully been used to support other teenagers and the team are now working on a five-year strategy that they hope will be used as the basis of national guidance on palliative and end of life care for teenagers and young adults.

Professor Chris Morley, Chief Nurse for Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said: “We are delighted that the hard work and creativity of our nursing teams has once again been singled out in these prestigious awards. Both teams have demonstrated key qualities of nursing care, providing patients with very complex needs with dignified, compassionate, patient-centred care. I am very proud of their excellent work and that they have been highlighted as shining examples of nursing care at its best.”

The winners of the Nursing Times Awards will be announced on Wednesday 14 October.

ENDS

Photo: Nursing staff from the Brearley 6 ward