Managing Long-term Conditions

Increasing numbers of people live with long-term conditions, and nurses take a leading role in helping many of them to manage their condition and minimise its effect on their life. Nurses can help these patients to identify and avoid the triggers that lead to exacerbations, and to recognise exacerbations at the earliest possible stage. They not only improve the quality of patients’ lives, but make effective use of resources by empowering patients to self-manage while providing support where necessary.

This award is open to individuals and teams working in the NHS or independent sector, and aims to recognise initiatives that have improved services for patients with one or more long-term conditions. Entrants should be able to demonstrate clear benefits of their initiative, for example in terms of improved patient outcomes or experience.

Examples might include initiatives to:

• Identify patients with undiagnosed long-term conditions
• Reduce avoidable hospital admissions
• Improve the provision of end-of-life care

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 

Take a look at what our 2019 winner had to say about winning this award: