Enhancing Patient Dignity

Healthcare is about more than simply curing or managing conditions. It is also about maximising patients’ dignity through the delivery of compassionate care. As the professionals with the most direct patient contact, it is nurses who have the greatest ability to protect their patients’ dignity.

This award is open to individual nurses or teams working in the NHS or independent sector and aims to recognise initiatives addressing aspects of care that compromise patient dignity or ensuring healthcare interventions do not unnecessarily compromise patients’ privacy, independence or individuality.

Examples might include initiatives to:

• Improve staff awareness of patient privacy
• Involve patients and families in initiatives to improve protection of patient dignity
• Engage staff in a zero-tolerance approach to care that lacks compassion

Each entry will be judged against the following criteria:

• Innovation: originality of the idea
• Value: impact of the initiative on patient care and/or service effectiveness
• Patient focus: evidence that patient/service user need was central to the work
• Collaboration: evidence of the involvement of other professionals, services and/or patients in the project
• Clinical effectiveness: data demonstrating how this initiative drives clinical enhancements
• Leadership: evidence of entrants championing their innovation in their organisation or more widely
• Adaptability: ideas that could be adapted for use elsewhere in entrants’ organisations or other organisations
• Sustainability: initiatives that can be embedded within organisations to operate without the input of the people who developed them