The St Helens and Knowsley Diabetes Team has won the prominent award for raising awareness of insulin safety.
The year 2021 marks 100 years of insulin, which is a hormone produced in the pancreas to assist your body when using glucose for energy. Sometimes, people with diabetes are unable to produce their own insulin or it does not manage glucose levels in their blood accurately. Therefore, they must take it as medication.
St Helens and Knowsley Diabetes Team joined with Dr Williams, the Trust’s Deputy Medical Director, and the Pharmacy department has been given the Excellence Award for their campaign stressing the importance of insulin safety, highlighting insulin milestones from the last 100 years, and emphasising the ‘6 rights’.
Beating the other 15 entrants, the St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust team accepted the Insulin Safety Week award via livestream at the Quality in Care Diabetes Awards, held at Sanofi head office on 14th October.
Amy Strong, Diabetes Clinical Nurse Specialist, said: “We are so proud to accept this award as a team. To win a Quality in Care award means that our work at STHK has been recognised, not only by the NHS but by patients too, for helping to improve the quality of life for people living with diabetes.”
Their Insulin Safety Week campaign consisted of wearing ‘Ask me about insulin’ badges, using social media to share interesting historical insulin facts and host a diabetes takeover on twitter, an insulin devices and storage workshop, and a promotional video from Dr Williams. They also used the opportunity to advertise their imminent Insulin Medicine Binder.
A total of 516 sites took part in the annual Insulin Safety Week which intends to increase understanding of insulin safety and is aimed towards health care professionals.
Becky Reeve, Head of Professional Relations at Sanofi Diabetes and Cardiovascular, said: “The devotion, passion, and innovation displayed by the St Helens and Knowsley Diabetes Team in their campaign was exceptional. All of the hard work they put into Insulin Safety Week was outstanding and clear to see, it shows just how much they care for their patients with diabetes.”
Emily Mayhew, Campaigns and Events Manager at Orange Juice Communications, was tasked with deciding the winner.
Emily said: “Congratulations to St Helens and Knowsley Diabetes Team for running such a significant and impactful campaign, the amount of effort that went into it was amazing. Awards like this are so important to recognise all the work diabetes teams do to help others and improve care.”
The runners up included Western Health and Social Care Trust, Oxford University Hospitals, and Northampton General Hospital.
The programme has been made possible with sponsorship from Sanofi. They had no editorial control over its contents.