Royal Surrey receives top patient safety gong as it celebrates triple award success | News

Royal Surrey took home Patient Safety Team of the Year as they picked up three prestigious gongs at the Health Service Journal (HSJ) Patient Safety Awards for innovative projects set up during the pandemic.

 St Luke’s Cancer Centre and Pharmacy Team were crowned HSJ Patient Safety Team of the Year, as well as winning the Safety in Medicines Management Award, while our Glaucoma Monitoring Team won Patient Safety Pilot Project of the Year Award.

Sally Seymour, Deputy Chief Pharmacist for Cancer, said: “The St Luke’s and Pharmacy team are so excited (and shocked) to receive these awards. It is brilliant that all the innovative work to keep St Luke’s patients safe during Covid-19 has been recognised in this way.

“At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, we knew that we had to reduce the risks of Covid infections for our vulnerable patients receiving anti-cancer treatments. To do this, St Luke’s Cancer Centre team and Pharmacy Department worked to provide remote consultations, drive-through services for medicine collection and home delivery of cancer medication. Our teams delivered these measures at pace, reducing the need for patients to attend St Luke’s, and making it safe for those who had to come onsite for treatment.”

Dan Lindfield, Glaucoma Consultant, and his team won the Patient Safety Pilot Project of the Year after setting up a drive-through Glaucoma monitoring service in just two weeks in January this year.

Dan said: “Winning this award is incredible. The whole project cost only £5,400 in equipment and went from an innovative idea to seeing patients within two weeks.”

Glaucoma is a potentially blinding disease, which is often symptomless, and any sight loss is irreversible. Setting up a drive-through service allowed the team to measure eye pressure and monitor Glaucoma through a patient’s car window, using a high-tech portable machine.

Dan added: “This is an example of a whole team working superbly together for the benefit of our patients through Covid adversity. Hopefully, we can build on these innovative ways of working to continue to improve our patient care.”

The Trust was also represented at the HSJ Patient Safety Awards by our SCReaM team who were shortlisted in the Patient Safety Education and Training category. The team comprises Suzi Lomax, consultant anaesthetist, and Jenny Sutcliffe, Chartered Ergonomist who run the SCReaM Human Factors and Team Resource Management (HF &TRM) Programme.

Also shortlisted for the HSJ Patient Safety Awards were Surrey Heartlands Health and Care Partnership for their collaborative education initiative to support reducing the spread of Covid-19 and keeping care providers’ residents and staff safe.

Louise Stead, Chief Executive, said: “Congratulations to our dedicated teams for their innovative work during the pandemic and for showcasing these impressive achievements so successfully at the HSJ Awards. They deserve huge recognition for their life-changing patient safety work and for enhancing quality of care for service users during one of the most challenging years in healthcare.”