Respiratory Nursing

Respiratory conditions, whether acute or long-term, affect every aspect of patients’ lives – both physically and psychologically. Specialist respiratory nurses make a profound difference by helping patients to minimise the effects of their condition and to reduce their risk of complications and exacerbations. General nurses can also do much to improve patient outcomes and the quality of care by attending to patients’ respiratory problems, regardless of whether this is the condition they have presented with.

This award is open to individuals and teams working in the NHS or independent sector who can demonstrate that they have improved the quality of care provided to patients with respiratory conditions.

Examples may include initiatives to:

• Improve patients’ self-management skills
• Increase patient adherence to treatment
• Reduce the spread of infectious respiratory diseases

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: