Promoting Best Practice for Women in Primary Care Award

The Primary Care Women’s Health Forum is delighted to announce the launch of the

Promoting Best Practice for Women in Primary Care Award

The Award is open to any commissioner or provider, team or individual promoting best practice in primary care for women, and will be presented to a project that is delivering excellence in women's health. We want you to share your stories of success, the achievements that have made you proud to be part of women’s health in primary care in the last year, or initiatives that have made a real difference for your patients.

How to enter
Entries are invited in one of five categories for promoting best practice in primary care for women:

Innovation
High Quality Care for All has helped to unite clinicians and managers around the principle of quality enabling them to focus efforts on using innovation to drive up both the quality of patient care and the productivity of healthcare services. Quality, Innovation, Productivity and Prevention (QIPP) or the Quality and Productivity Challenge is about creating an environment in which change and improvement can flourish. It is about leading differently and in a way that fosters a culture of innovation. It is about providing staff with the tools, techniques and support that will enable them to take ownership of improving quality of care.

Clinical effectiveness
This is the extent to which specific clinical interventions do what they are intended to do, ie maintain and improve the health of patients securing the greatest possible health gain from the available resources. It is the right person (you) doing:
• The right thing (evidence-based practice)
• In the right way (skills and competence)
• At the right time (providing treatment/services when the patient needs them)
• In the right place (location of treatment/services)
• With the right result (clinical effectiveness/maximising health gain).

Patient safety
This the process by which an organisation makes patient care safer. It should involve:
• Risk assessment
• The identification and management of patient-related risk
• The reporting and analysis of incidents
• The capacity to learn from and follow up incidents and implement solutions to minimise the risk of them recurring.

Patient experience
After extensive research involving patients, the public and NHS staff, patient experience is defined as an NHS that meets not only physical needs but also emotional needs. This means:
• Getting good treatment in a comfortable, caring and safe environment, delivered in a calm and reassuring way
• Having information to make choices, to feel confident and to feel in control
• Being talked to and listened to as an equal, being treated with honesty, respect and dignity.

Service delivery
This is the shared role of improving care and re-designing services. It is teams making the improvements their patients really want. This is about delivering the sort of care pathways that leave patients feeling safer, happier and more valued, and making staff feel more positive, rewarded and empowered.

Rules for the Promoting Best Practice for Women in Primary Care Award
1. Entry to the award is free
2. Entries can only be accepted from the UK
3. All entries must be original and must not have appeared in a national journal or have been presented at a national meeting prior to the submission deadline date
4. Entries must be for primary care or across the whole pathway
5. Entries must be submitted on an official entry form downloadable here (word doc)
6. We can accept abstract entries in Word format or Rich Text Format
7. Abstracts should be typed, no smaller than 10pt in single spacing
8. Abstracts should be no more than 300 words (250 words if tables are included)
9. Do not include references or illustrations
10. Any biographical and identifying data should appear on the front page only, so that all work is blinded to the judges
11. Authors can submit multiple entries
12. Every entry must be completed on a separate entry form
13. Every entry must state which category it should be judged against
14. Entries will only be accepted electronically
15. Electronic entries must be submitted to lcave@primarycarewomenshealthforum.org by 17.00 on Friday 30th April 2010
16. The judges’ decisions are final

Important dates

The Award will be judged by:
• Kathy Abernethy, Associate Director/Senior Nurse Specialist, Menopause Clinical and Research Unit, Northwick Park Hospital Harrow, Middlesex. Director, the Menopause Course - an educational initiative for nurses
• Sue Calvert, Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist, Bradford Royal Infirmary. Special interests in urogynaecology, colposcopy and vulval disease. Tutor for the GPwSI Diploma in Gynaecology
• Lesley Cave, Programme Director: Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland
• Christine Corrin, Practitioner with Special Interest in Gynaecology, Colposcopist and Hysteroscopist, Leeds

GOOD LUCK!