Pallative care team at Cynthia Spencer Hospice shortlisted in national award

The hospice has been shortlisted in the Pallative Care team of the year category in The BMJ Awards 2016.

The BMJ Awards are the UK’s premier medical awards programme, recognising and celebrating the inspirational work done by doctors and their teams.

This year’s awards attracted more than 300 entries across 15 categories, including anaesthesia, cancer care, dermatology, and palliative care.

Next month, the shortlisted teams will present their projects to an expert judging panel, which for the first time will include a patient representative.

The winners will be announced at a ceremony on May 5, 2016 at the Park Plaza Westminster Bridge, London.

Cynthia Spencer Hospice set up a Palliative Neurology Service to improve services for patients with motor neurone disease.

The service is a huge success, with over 90 percent of patients reviewed withinone week of referral, 85 percent of patients able to achieve their preferred pace of care, and 97 percent of patients able to achieve their preferred place of death.

Also nominated is Kettering General Hospital in the Cancer Care team of the year category.

The shortlisting is for a project at KGH to provide early diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer patients.

Following the introduction of the service, average time to diagnosis for an urgent referral is now 12 days, compared with an average of 21 days for the

other seven hospitals in the region.

The number of hospital bed-days occupied due to lung cancer admissions dropped by 57% and length of stay dropped substantially from 11.6 to 8.1 days. The current national average is 8.9 days.