The BMJ launches ninth medical awards

Spur to further success

Winning one of The BMJ awards draws attention, attracts media coverage, and reinvigorates enthusiasm: it is not the end of a process but an important punctuation mark. Chris Harris, long term conditions lead at Bradford Clinical Commissioning Group, whose Bradford’s Healthy Hearts campaign won the clinical leadership category in 2016, said it was recognition of all the work that had gone into targeting patients in 41 Bradford general practices with uncontrolled cholesterol and trying to put it right.

Since winning the award in May 2016, Bradford’s Healthy Hearts has sustained its high profile by sponsoring an event last month in City Park in which a Guinness world record was set for the longest ever chain of people making heart shaped hand gestures. Its total of 2331 people eclipsed the record of 1936 held, improbably, by the Tokyo Steel Products Dealers Association.

The next stage of the campaign, focusing on hypertension, was launched at the event in the park. “Launching our blood pressure campaign there was a great way of getting across a serious health message which could help thousands of people,” he said.

“GPs in Bradford are pulling out all the stops to reduce the number of people suffering from cardiovascular disease, and getting more people to have their blood pressure checked—by a practice nurse, pharmacist, or using a home blood pressure monitor—could further reduce the risk of stroke and heart disease.”

Another of the 2016 winners, radiologist Sam Hare, is working with NHS England to get the technique of ambulatory lung biopsy that he pioneered at Barnet Hospital more widely adopted. A training day will be held at the Royal Free Hospital in London on 11 November (http://www.pobas.co.uk/faculty/4592130312).

The headline sponsor for the awards will once more be the MDDUS (the Medical and Dental Defence Union of Scotland), which also sponsors the primary care award.

Fiona Godlee, editor in chief of The BMJ, said: “This year’s awards seem particularly important, given the extraordinary pressure that the NHS is under and the impact this is having on health professionals’ morale and working conditions. The awards offer us all a chance to properly celebrate the professionalism, commitment, creativity, and hard work of healthcare teams across the country, and to show case wonderful examples of excellence and innovation in how patient care is designed and delivered.

“It’s a huge pleasure to see the wide range of high quality entries that we receive each year, and I look forward to sharing these achievements with readers of the journal and at the gala event in May.”