Innovations Award 2011

The Innovations Award is an annual programme which aims to recognise practices and projects that exemplify the Colleges key principles: Service, Science and Healing. It is for innovative and patient-centred health care projects at the forefront of putting these principles into practice.

You can find out more about these projects on their own websites (linked below) or on our Innovators Network page - along with dozens of other excellent projects.

Service

1. Committed to the common good, transcending self interest and professional self protection.

2. Focusing on the patient in front of them.

3. Involving users in the development and day-to-day running of the project

Science

1. Practicing a form of appropriate evidence based medicine.

2. Committed to ongoing audit and evaluation.

Healing

1. Promoting an integrated and holistic approach that includes body, mind and spirit.

2. Exploring and extending patients’ ability to help themselves improve their own and their family's health and well-being.

3. Aiming to maximise the wellbeing of the local community. 4. Taking into account the wider determinants of health such as nutrition, education and the environment.

2011 Winners

Winner - Clinical category

Foxhill Medical Centre, Sheffield.

A General Practice/Primary Care Service situated in a deprived part of Sheffield whose mission is to promote health and well-being, as well as to provide crisis intervention and disease management.

Why they won:
The team:

• Provide a positive, compassionate healing culture delivering integrated medical care to their patients.
• Are committed to evidence-based practice, incorporating audit/evaluation and patient feedback into their work.
• Include integrative approaches: acupuncture, medical herbalism, massage and psychotherapy.
• Deliver interventions for general well-being and for chronic diseases: Tai chi/yoga, for chronic lung disease/stress/mental health problems.
• Nurture innovations and creativity: art, creative writing, Agewell and walking groups.
• Have strong links with local community initiatives and foster an atmosphere of ownership by patients over their healthcare through their patient participation group and patient.

Quote: Practice Manager Mandy said,
“It’s good to know Foxhill’s efforts are not only appreciated by the patients, but also identified as innovative by the profession!”

Runner-up - Clinical category
Connecting Communities, C2, Falmouth

C2, led by a health practitioner, is an evidence-based, multi-agency programme which delivers learning and skills needed to support residents in disadvantaged neighbourhoods to lead and sustain transformational change and to become self-managing.

Why they were a runner-up:

• Healing troubled communities is at the heart of the C2 approach and they have achieved many measurable health and social-wellbeing outcomes.
• Since C2 was established, childhood asthma rates have halved, post-natal depression rates have dropped by 70%, breast feeding rates increased by 30%, these have been attributed to a considerable degree to the project
• C2 supports communities to lead change and improvements for themselves and become self-managing.
• They have developed a 7-step process ‘From Isolation to Transformation’ for neighbourhood development, which is now being adopted in other areas of deprivation around the country.
• Research, evaluation and health needs assessments are part of their underpinning programme.

Quote:
Connecting Communities, C2, Falmouth
Hazel Stuteley O.B.E. said,
“Winning the College of Medicines Innovations award for Connecting Communities (or C2 as we call it) is wonderful news for the project, not just for me personally, but for all the residents and frontline workers within the many disadvantaged communities who have used C2 to transform where they live and improve their health at the same time. Health Inequalities remains one of the toughest challenges within the NHS. We know C2 works as it is truly' people-centred'. Recognition at this level will not only give us great credibility, but also, via the Innovations Network, the chance to spread what we've learnt and bring healing to many more troubled communities.”

Winner - Education category
Whole Person Care course, Bristol Medical School.

The University of Bristol offers first year medical undergraduates a foundation training in Whole Person Care featuring: teaching on systems thinking (the process of understanding how things influence one another within a whole system), the therapeutic relationship, psychoneuroimmunology (PNI), the arts in healthcare, creativity and integrative medicine.

Why they won:
The course:

• Is presently the only university in the UK taking holism into the core medical curriculum in a traditional (preclinicial/clinical) medical course, therefore providing an antidote to medicine’s tendency to draw things into separate parts.
• Is designed to help students understand how an integrative approach forms the basis of good medical practice
• Strives to make itself relevant to students and deal with any possible negative associations of holism.
• Emphasises the need to consider the therapeutic relationship and to hear the patient’s story.
• Includes teaching sessions on nutrition, exercise, mediation, art and creativity, self-care, as well as complementary medicine.

Quote: Dr Trevor Thompson, course leader, said,
“The Award sends a clear signal to other colleagues that we are doing something considered important at a national level. This recognition will assist us in our mission to bring holistic ideas into more parts of the curriculum.”

Judging panel was led by Professor David Colin-Thomé, and included Professor David Peters, Professor George Lewith and Kaye McIntosh.

The Innovations Award, launched earlier in 2011, invited applications from projects that are at the forefront of delivery patient-centred care, with appropriate evidence-base, committed to ongoing audit and evaluation; and aimed at maximising the wellbeing of the local community.

Dr Michael Dixon, College of Medicine Chairman said,
“It is wonderful to see the diversity and versatility of the projects. Each of them has made a difference to patients as well as the future of healthcare; and every one of them is a token of the College’s commitment towards service, science and healing. Our job now is to make the ethos mainstream.”

Applications for the 2013 Awards opens in September 2012

Shortlist

• The Culm Valley Integrated Centre for Health
• Wester Hailes Health Agency, Edinburgh
• The School Based Integrative Health Centre, Penair
• The Rehabilitation Unit Complementary Therapy Service, Christie’s Hospital
• The Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine 

Award Coordinator: Helen Cooke (helen.cooke@collegeofmedicine.org.uk

Judge: Professor David Colin-Thome retired as National Clinical Director for Primary Care in January 2011, having held the post since May 2001. A GP from 1971 at Castlefields Health Centre Runcorn, David retired in March 2007. His practice has been leading-edge nationally over the last 10 years or so, pioneering systematic management of long-term conditions employing managed care techniques.

David has considerable experience in the public sector having spent 11 years as a councillor and formerly senior medical officer at the Scottish Office and Director of Primary care at North West and London Regional offices. Former adviser to Central Manchester University Hospital 2004-07. He publishes regularly on primary care reform.