HEALTH SERVICE EXCELLENCE AWARDS SHOWCASE INCREDIBLE STAFF INNOVATION
T
he annual HSE Health Service Excellence Awards represent an opportunity for staff to share and showcase their innovative and exceptional work. They promote team work, facilitate staff to establish their service as an exemplar and help demonstrate how staff are valued for the work that they do. A record number of entries – totalling almost 700 – were received this year with 80 staff members nominated for their outstanding contribution. Entries featured both COVID and non-COVID related services and all winners in the eight categories were worthy recipients. Congratulating award recipients and entrants, HSE CEO Paul Reid noted how staff had showcased their “impressive skills and their can do attitude in every aspect of their work.” Commenting on the quality of the entries, the CEO said
that patients and the public were “already reaping the efforts of staff to prioritise and improve patient care. This is what the health service is all about.” Describing it as a privilege to add his congratulations, An Taoiseach Micheal Martin noted how the country was now “slowly emerging from one of the toughest years our health service has experienced. I want to express how grateful I am and how grateful the entire country is for the leadership, commitment, resilience and adaptability demonstrated by health service staff – you have my admiration and respect and the admiration and respect of the Government.” Commenting specifically on the awards, the Taoiseach said the “innovation and ambition demonstrated by all the projects submitted is emblematic of the quality of service you provide.”
SERVICE DEVELOPMENT AND INNOVATION IN RESPONDING TO COVID
CONTACT TRACING ‘SAVED THOUSANDS OF LIVES’
The national contact management programme was responsible for saving thousands of lives during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr Sarah Doyle, a specialist in public health medicine, was Clinical Lead of the HSE Contact Management Programme from March 2020 to March 2021, said the lives were saved ‘by breaking individual chains of transmission through advice to cases and close contacts and also through enabling departments of public health to manage large and complex outbreaks and also do contact tracing in complex and highly vulnerable settings’. The establishment of the contact management programme was the winning project in the award for Service Development and Innovation in Responding to COVID-19. “We established the Contact Management Programme in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the knowledge of the very large numbers of cases and close contacts that would soon be coming our way in Ireland,” she said. “The idea was to provide contact tracing of high volume but low complexity cases and contacts so the Departments of Public Health could use their expertise to manage high complex settings and outbreaks. The impact of our contact management programme, I believe, was in the saving of thousands of lives.” “A secondary impact was the impact it had on those of us who worked in the contact management programme. It showed us how we, working as a team, could respond so effectively and efficiently to a crisis of this magnitude.”
6 | HEALTH MATTERS WINTER 2021
Dr John Coulter
EXCELLENCE IN QUALITY CARE
100% SUCCESS RATE FOR NATIONAL GESTATIONAL TROPHOBLASTIC DISEASE CENTRE The winner in the Excellence in Quality Care category was the National Gestational Trophoblastic Disease Centre in Cork University Hospital. Explaining the background and thanking those involved, Dr John Coulter, Consultant Gynaecologist and Clinical Lead, explained, “In this disease a malignancy can occur in the placenta which requires multiple courses of chemotherapy for cure in many women. Over many years in Ireland the management of gestational trophoblastic disease and molar pregnancy has been quite inconsistent and many patients have had to travel to the UK for treatment. “But with the help of the National Cancer Control Programme and the HSE we set up a National Gestational Trophoblastic Disease Centre here in Ireland to provide excellence in care for all women diagnosed with molar pregnancy in Ireland. “Since going live in 2017 we have managed over 500 women in Ireland with gestational trophoblastic disease and molar pregnancy with 100% success rate. Many of these women have required multiple courses of chemotherapy but all have been cured thankfully. Most patients give us feedback telling us that as well as receiving professional and expert medical care, they also feel minded by our nurse specialists. To me, this peace of mind that the patients have, while being medically managed on this dangerous journey, means that the establishment of our national centre has been a success.”