Nurse team announced as 2025 winners of the Steve Hugh Award

The Single Point of Access Nurses have been named as the 2025 winners of the Steve Hugh Award - for their work with the West Midlands Ambulance Service.

The Steve Hugh Award is an annual Shropdoc award given in memory of Dr. Steve Hugh, Shropdoc's former Medical Director, who passed away in 2005. 

It recognises and celebrates the work of a health professional or team who goes above and beyond in providing exceptional care to patients, reflecting Steve Hugh's values of enthusiasm, drive, and creativity in healthcare.

This year, it has been awarded to the Single Point of Access Nurses - the Nurses who support the West Midlands Ambulance Service (WMAS) to alleviate long wait times by triaging patient cases.

The nomination said: “Not only do they save WMAS, local hospitals and GPs time and money, but they do so with compassion, care, and kindness, upholding both their NMC code of conduct and Shropdoc’s core values of Quality, Kindness, Community, Integrity, and Development.”

The service the SPA Nurses provide was initially set up in just over a week in December 2021 as immediate and urgent support to WMAS - staffed by nurses’ goodwill and extra hours. The Single Point of Access service has now become a permanent workstream. 

Medical Director, Dr Simon Chapple, said: “As trusted local assessors, SPA Nurses, through their skill and diligence can often avoid admission and refer instead to community service colleagues, the patients’ own GP, end a call at triage and if hospital is required the teams navigate the patients to a specialty assessment area, hopefully avoiding the emergency department.

“These cases are the most varied and challenging of all cases in many ways. The calls range from elderly patients still on the floor after falling to patients with chest pain, mental health needs and even a patient who was advanced in labour - correctly recognised by one of our SPA nurses.

“Despite these challenges, from the inception of the service until today, the SPA team has successfully accepted over 150,000 cases, which would otherwise have required an ambulance or emergency department attendance.”

The nomination for the SPA nurses came from Clinical Lead Nurse and Clinical Team Leader, Sister Wendy Owen.

She adds: “In addition to this amazing feat, CCC/SPA also take calls from Paramedics on scene under the WMAS  ‘Call before Convey’ scheme - further avoiding ED attendances for Patients who do require a WMAS response and admission. SPA Nurses also take cases from the 111 service who require our local expertise and knowledge to avoid admissions. 

“I feel the team of Nurses who manage to deliver both quantity and quality of care deserve recognition for their immense effort and success.”