Nursing schemes nominated for awards

Staff organised a boot-camp for budding community nurses

Two groups of nurses in Wolverhampton have been nominated for national awards.

One team set up a training programme for new community nurses, while the other introduced remote monitoring of patients at home using digital apps.

Both initiatives are from The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust (RWT) community teams based in Bushbury.

The winners of the Nursing Times Workforce Awards will be announced in November.

The boot camp programme for community nurses was created two years ago to stem a rapid turnover of staff, many of whom left within a year of joining the trust.

Leader Sue Houghton said: "New starters felt frustrated due to limited support and development... This programme has not only helped keep staff but attracted interest locally and other areas.”

It has been nominated as Best Workplace for Learning and Development at the awards.

Kirsty Dyas and her colleague Helen Hartill are the digital nurses running the virtual ward

The virtual ward programme, meanwhile, is a finalist in the Best Use of Workplace Technology section.

It enables nurses to keep tabs on patients at home rather than in hospital, by using smartphone apps to take and report observations.

Most patients are monitored three times daily, while some with long-term lung conditions report weekly.

Digital nurses Kirsty Dyas and Helen Hartill have created training modules for colleagues since being appointed in February and said they were "privileged and proud" to have been shortlisted.

They added: "We have utilised various ways of remote monitoring for our patients to allow them to take responsibility of their condition with medical input."

The awards organisers said they were created to "shine a light on those excelling in nurse recruitment and retention, wellbeing and inclusion", in an attempt to overcome a "workforce challenge in health and social care".

The ceremony takes place in London on 28 November.