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Posted on 15 Jul 2024

Nottinghamshire Healthcare is delighted to have colleagues shortlisted in two categories in the Nursing Times Awards for their dedication to delivering excellent patient care.  

Ellin McIntyre, Specialist Mental Health Practitioner has been shortlisted in the Ann Shuttleworth Rising Star Award. Our Level 1 Continence Clinic team in Rushcliffe has been shortlisted in the Continence Promotion and Care category.

Despite being early on in her career Ellin has shown an aptitude and passion for nursing. Ellin’s value as a nurse shines through, with her down to earth and caring approach, she often gets positive feedback from both colleagues and service users. One parent said about Ellin’s care “thank you very much for your excellent help this year. Your job must feel impossible at times and hopefully rewarding at other times. I want to assure you that I think you have had a very positive impact on helping her stay with us and get through this most unsettling and challenging time of her life” they went on to say “she has smiled, laughed and created fun a lot. It has been so encouraging and rewarding to see such a change in her.” Her work has a clear benefit to service users and colleagues alike.

(Ellin)

Ellin is constantly looking for ways to improve the care delivered and address gaps, she works closely with management to adapt our offer. One example of this is the out of hours self-harm group for parents that Ellin runs - not only adjusting her hours to ensure parents can attend after work but providing vital education and care to support parents who are worried, which in turn supports the young people. It’s this innovative thinking that set her apart from her peers, she consistently asks why and how we can do things better and finds original solutions, even if it means more work for her!

Ellin embodies all the excellent qualities of a nurse but most especially teamworking, she is the heart of her team and jumps in quickly to support service users and colleagues. 

Our Level 1 Continence Clinic team in Rushcliffe have been shortlisted for their fantastic work to significantly reduce the waiting time for attending their clinic, which has had a really positive impact on patient care. 

Following the pandemic, there was a 2.5 year waiting list for level 1 continence clinics.

The Level 1 service is commissioned to provide comprehensive continence assessments for adults (18 years old and above), enabling diagnosis and treatment with individually focused care plans and referral to other health or social care services as appropriate .

Having reviewed the waiting lists it became evident that the team needed a robust plan, whilst managing the increased referrals coming through due to the post pandemic surge and most importantly return to delivering a quality continence service to the patients across Rushcliffe. 

(l-r Nicola Zurawliw, Head of Services, Proactive and Planned Care Management, Kay Richardson, Community Staff Nurse, Katie Grant, Community Nursing Team Leader - Rushcliffe)

They sought to bring in another continence nurse so daily continence clinics could be introduced, instead of the once a week clinic that was previously available. 

In 9 months, the waiting list was reduced rapidly to ensure patients could be seen promptly and within a suitable timeframe keeping below NHSE waiting list target.  To reduce the waiting list from years to weeks was an outstanding achievement.

Diane Hull, Executive Director or Nursing, AHPs and Quality said:

“We are really delighted to see Ellin and our Continence Clinic team in Rushcliffe shortlisted in these prestigious awards. They all work exceptionally hard and continually look at news ways of working to ensure they are providing the best possible patient care. I’m really proud of all they have achieved so far, they thoroughly deserve this recognition. Wishing them the best of luck for the ceremony.”

Winners will be announced at the awards ceremony on 23 October 2024.