Patient-led haemochromatosis project wins Patient Safety Learning award

Peter Walsh (centre) with Yvonne Francis and Neil McClements

Congratulations to Neil Clements, Yvonne Francis and Haemochromatosis UK, who have won the inaugural Patient Safety Learning/AvMA award for “engaging patients and their families in safety improvement initiatives”. The award recognises and rewards healthcare workers for making patient safety improvements, working effectively with families and improving culture to better support patient safety learning.

The winning project was a collaboration between Neil, a haemochromatosis patient; Yvonne, a haematology clinical nurse specialist from Guy’s and St Thomas’s NHS Foundation Trust; and Haemochromatosis UK. It won the award for “defining and promoting venesection best practice”.

AvMA chief executive and member of the judging panel, Peter Walsh, said: “The judges were particularly impressed by this initiative because of how it emanated from real patient experience and was patient-led resulting in a powerful collaboration between the patient, the NHS trust, a national charity, and is bringing about demonstrable patient safety improvement”.

Corrina Towers, Chair of Trustees at Haemochromatosis UK said, “It’s great that HUK’s work to bring together nurses, patients, academics and professional bodies to share best practice, improve safety and drive consistency of treatment has been recognised with this award. It gives us confidence to continue our work to create venesection protocols and training resources so that any healthcare professional treating any GH patient in any setting can access the right guidance at the right time.”

See more information on Haemochromatosis UK’s website