NUTRITION TEAM GAINS NATIONAL RECOGNITION

A team of staff at the South West Yorkshire Mental Health NHS Trust are celebrating their recent success at the prestigious Nursing Times Awards. The Nutrition Policies project team were finalists at the Awards and were awarded second prize.

The Nursing Times Awards were endorsed by the Department of Health and presented by the chief nursing officer, Sarah Mullally and the BBC social affairs editor, Niall Dickson in London’s Park Lane Hotel on 10 October 2002. This year the awards centred around the ‘Essence of Care’ – the Department of Health’s clinical benchmarking initiative which identifies fundamental standards of care in key areas, including wound care, continence, nutrition and privacy and dignity.

The multidisciplinary team from Wakefield who attended the awards were led by Barbara Tootle, senior dietitian and James Waplington, modern matron, representing the South West Yorkshire Mental Health NHS Trust – which was the only mental health trust represented in these national finals.

The project was entered for the ‘Essence of Care in Nutrition’ category. The project developed evidence-based nutrition policies that identify and address nutritional problems within the mental health and learning disabilities services at Fieldhead, Wakefield.

The team were awarded second prize and the project was described by the judges as "an amazing achievement in a very challenging environment".