Colleagues gather for the first-ever Essential Care Awards ceremony
Over 60 Team BCHC colleagues attended a ceremony earlier this week, sharing their successes of the care they provide to our patients.
Across 2024 and into 2025, a series of 34 ‘Essential Care Awards’ visits were made to different teams across the Trust. The purpose of these visits was to focus on how patients and service users experience our care, prevention of harm and rehabilitation.
Taking a multi-disciplinary approach, the visits were comprised of a team of senior leads, allied health professionals, clinicians, quality improvement and safety colleagues.
The Essential Care Awards visits also aimed to highlight and support our teams to be able to deliver the very best care and assure them that they know what matters to patients. Teams were also supported with quality improvement initiatives. Following a validation process, the visits were then marked gold, silver, or bronze.
A total of 21 teams were able to attend the recent ceremony, celebrating their hard work across the year and recognising the importance of essential care in day-to-day practice.
‘Essential care’ is based on the NHS’ Essential Care Framework, that provides guidance and tools to enable clinical teams to self-assess how well they meet what matters most to our patients. All patients should expect to receive great care, and there are 12 specific areas or ‘domains’ that are deemed as essential, those are:
- Person-Centred Care
- Dignity and Respect
- Consent
- Safety
- Safeguarding from Abuse
- Hydration and Nutrition
- Safe and clean equipment and environment
- Complaints
- Good Governance
- Safe Staffing
- Compassionate and Professional Staff
- Duty of Candour
Lorraine Galligan (right), Chief of Nursing and Therapies and Robbie Dedi (left), Chief Medical Officer presented awards, certificates and pin badges to all colleagues involved in the Essential Care Awards visits, thanking them for their involvement and commitment.
A few of the teams who were awarded shared that although they initially felt a little ‘unsure’ or ‘uncomfortable’ about the visits, they ultimately felt that the visits brought teams closer together, with a want to ‘show off’ the great work that they are doing that perhaps would have gone unnoticed.
Professor David Sallah, Chair, closed the event with a message of inspiration and hope that next year’s ceremony will see an even bigger turnout with a wider range of the teams and those involved in the Essential Care Awards visit process.
