This year’s Kate Granger Awards for Compassionate Care is just around the corner and aims to recognise individuals, teams and organisations working within the NHS who have made a huge difference to patient care.

The awards, to be presented at the Health and Innovation Expo 2015 in Manchester on 02/03 September, are named after Dr Kate Granger. Kate, who is terminally ill with a very rare type of sarcoma, has worked tirelessly to raise awareness around compassion in the NHS through her #hellomynameis social media campaign.

Earlier this year our Trust launched Compassion Cards which are awarded to nurses who are nominated by colleagues or the public for displaying particular kindness and empathy and routinely going the extra mile for their patients. This drive to acknowledge compassion in delivering patient care has been recognised with an award nomination.

The brains behind the scheme Julie Tunney, deputy chief nurse at our Trust, said: “Compassion is probably one of the hardest things to measure in healthcare so at our Trust we decided to launch Compassion Cards as a way of marking what is such an important part of nursing. These are awarded to our nursing staff as recognition of behaviours such as being kind, going the extra mile and treating patients how you would wish to be treated yourself.

“We have organised celebration events twice a year to award our nursing staff with Compassion Cards and to date we have awarded 30 cards to staff who have displayed these qualities of excellence in care.

“It is fantastic to be nominated for the Kate Granger Awards for Compassionate Care as it is recognition of the work we are doing within the Trust to imbed the principles of the 6Cs of Nursing – the core values and behaviours nurses hold themselves to – in the work we do every day in caring for our patients.”

For more information, please visit the NHS England website www.england.nhs.uk.