Excellence in healthcare is celebrated in The BMJ Awards 2015

Projects to reduce the rate of stillbirths in England, to identify the care that patients want at the end of their life, and to help deliver psychotherapy in general practices were all winners in The BMJ Awards 2015 last night.

The awards, sponsored by the Medical and Dental Defence Union of Scotland (MDDUS), took place at the Westminster Park Plaza Hotel, London. Other winners included a team that set out to improve the care pathway for patients with prostate cancer, another that focused on improving the quality of care of people with hip fracture, and a team that has transformed maternity care in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia by training health workers there.

The Lifetime Achievement award went to Doug Altman, the master statistician and author of the bestselling book Practical Statistics for Medical Research. It is said that Altman has done more than anybody to raise the standards of medical publication and in the process has transformed the role of statistician from number cruncher to custodian of important but often neglected values.

In the foreword to this year’s ceremony brochure Fiona Godlee, editor in chief of The BMJ, said that when the 2015 awards opened for entries six months ago—a time when pressure on the NHS was mounting—no one was sure whether doctors and their teams would have the time to enter. “Somehow, in their scores, they managed,” she wrote. “And thank goodness they did because in those entries lies a truth that too rarely gets spoken: the health service is stuffed full of dedicated teams doing jaw-droppingly great work for the benefit of patients. In these awards we salute you.”

Two teams from Birmingham won top prizes in this year’s awards. The Perinatal Institute in Birmingham picked up the Clinical Leadership Team of the Year for its work on stillbirths, while the Diabetes Team of the Year award went to the South Asian Health Foundation.

Three teams from the north of England took home prizes. The Palliative Care Team of the Year was awarded to the Palliative Care Managed Clinical Network from Bradford, and the award for Patient Safety Team of the Year went to Northumbria Healthcare Foundation Trust. Women’s Health Team of the Year went to a team from the Centre of Maternal and Newborn Health in Liverpool, which uses UK volunteers in the UK to train healthcare workers in Africa and Asia. Their work has reduced maternal deaths by 50% and stillbirths by 15%.

The Research Paper of the Year was won by a team from Imperial College London that investigated discrepancies in all the published trials of injection of bone marrow stem cells into patients with heart disease. The judges described the study as “a new approach to assessing the quality of research” that “blows the whistle on therapeutic claims, signalled by errors in reporting.” They added, “[The] findings also slam the editorial and peer reviewer processes of the journals in which these studies were reported.”

Four other teams from London walked away with top prizes. University College London Hospital and University College London won the award for Innovation Team of the Year. Imaging Team of the Year was awarded to a team from the Pelican Cancer Foundation and the Royal Marsden Hospital. Primary Care Team of the Year was awarded to the Argyle Surgery in Ealing. The Tavistock and Portman Foundation Trust from north and east London won the Mental Health Team of the Year for its role in helping GPs manage patients who miss the threshold for treatment in secondary care but who could benefit from psychotherapy.

From the south west of England the Devon Partnership Trust won the Dementia Team of the Year award, and a team from Cardiff and Vale University Health Board won the award for Gastroenterology Team of the Year for teaching patients with intestinal failure to manage parenteral feeding themselves, saving them the journey to London or Salford to access the training.