Categories
To begin your entry, please tick the category/categories below that you would like to enter.
Stage one of the judging process involves judges shortlisting entries based solely on the information you have provided here, so please make sure your entry includes as much evidence as possible.
In stage two, shortlisted entrants will present their entries to a panel of judges for deliberation. This is currently scheduled to be in-person in our London offices (as it was pre-pandemic). This second stage is subject to change in accordance with official guidance relating to Covid-19.
Organisation
Best Student Experience
This award seeks to recognise universities and providers of nurse and/or midwife education that are putting an emphasis on the overall student experience. This focus ensures students are supported in a learning community that is nurturing of the whole person as well as being conducive to encouraging excellence in learning and sharing best practice. Student experience is even more relevant considering the impacts of the pandemic, while the scarcity of funding for post-registration education has raised students’ expectations of their education provider and gives students more choice about where and how they study.
Nursing Associate Training Programme Provider of the Year (pre-registration)
This award will recognise those universities and healthcare providers that offer high standards of training, and excellent resources that inspire their trainees and nurture their development.
Nurse Education Provider of the Year (Post-registration)
Continuing education and professional development is essential for nurses and midwives once they are qualified. This category recognises institutions that offer courses to develop the leadership, management and clinical skills of qualified nurses. Judges will be looking for a broad portfolio of courses that will be relevant and highly rated by nurses and midwives. It will also recognise providers who have adapted their portfolio to continue providing learning opportunities during the pandemic.
Nurse Education Provider of the Year (Pre-registration)
This award will recognise those universities that offer high standards of academic and practical teaching, and excellent resources that inspire their students and nurture their development.
Partnership of the Year
This award seeks to recognise the important collaboration between higher educational institutions and organisations providing healthcare to the public with a view to providing a conducive learning environment.
Student Placement of the Year: Community
Students view their placement as one of the most exhilarating but also challenging experiences of their student lives. This award seeks to recognise those community settings that manage the anxieties associated with going on placement by providing a structured learning environment that helps students to flourish. This includes clearly setting out what students will be exposed to during their time on placement, and ensuring they are supported to learn, practise skills and gain wisdom from the wider team.
Student Placement of the Year: Hospital
Students view their placement as one of the most exhilarating but also challenging experiences of their student lives. This award seeks to recognise those hospital wards and environments that manage the anxieties associated with going on placement by providing a structured learning environment that helps the student to flourish. This includes clearly setting out what students will be exposed to during their time at the hospital, and ensuring they are supported to learn, practise skills and gain wisdom from the wider team.
Teaching Innovation of the Year
In an increasingly competitive academic and recruitment landscape, those universities and placement providers adapting traditional methods or developing alternate ways to offer interesting, innovative and engaging methods of teaching will be most noticed. The use of technology has naturally been especially in the spotlight during the pandemic, with many education staff working from home or students doing virtual placements. This is an award that looks for any teaching method that is workable, successful and potentially sustainable – including (but not limited to) use of social networking, modern communication media or new technology.
Individual
Student Innovation in Practice
This award seeks to recognise a student who has made an exceptional contribution to their placement by inspiring, leading or carrying out an innovative project that improves patient or service user care, experience or outcomes; helps support the wellbeing of staff so they are better enabled to provide high-quality care; or improves the effectiveness or efficiency of service delivery.
Student Nurse of the Year: Mental Health
This award celebrates the skills mental health student nurses need to develop to nurse this often hard-to-reach and excluded group. The judges will be looking for an outstanding final-student who offers excellent care and support to this group in treating or helping them to manage their mental health problems.
Student Nurse of the Year: Children
This award aims to recognise and acknowledge the excellent communication skills as well as good clinical knowledge needed to care for this group of patients. The judges will be looking for a final-year student nurse who can advocate for children undergoing acute treatment or with long-term conditions, and their parents or carers. Entrants should be able to demonstrate a high level of nursing knowledge and a special set of skills to help them win the trust of this patient group.
Learner of the Year: Post-registration
This award recognises the importance of registered nurses continuing to study and develop throughout their career. This can be achieved in a variety of ways – either by studying an academic course or by other methods of continuing professional development, including online learning. Open to registered nurses in any branch or field of nursing, this award recognises outstanding learning and motivation to continually update knowledge and skills.
Student Midwife of the Year
This award aims to recognise an outstanding student and to celebrate the understanding and communication skills needed in this field – from clinical skills to academic achievement, as well as interpersonal skills, which underpin the treatment of this patient group and relate to their families. In essence, entrants must combine the knowledge, skills and qualities required to excel. As a student entering a midwifery career, the winner will have a broad understanding of the range of conditions and contraindications related to midwifery care and will demonstrate excellent clinical skills to ensure best is delivered at all times throughout antenatal, birth and postnatal care.
Most Inspirational Student Nurse of the Year
This award will recognise a student in pre-registration or post-registration education who has inspired peers either on a placement or at their higher education institution. Entrants could have overcome significant obstacles in their personal lives or circumstance to achieve success as a student nurse or midwife.
Alternatively, entrants could have contributed to their studies or placement in such a way that they have inspired their peers and those they have worked with, for example by advising, guiding and acting as enablers for junior peers. Entrants could have, for example, worked with a charity, undertaken a personal project or developed an innovation that would benefit health professionals or patients. The effort, work and behaviour of this student nurse will be an inspiration to those around them.
Outstanding Contribution to Student Affairs
This award seeks to recognise a student who has made an exceptional contribution to student affairs during their time at university. Examples include the improvement of curriculum, facilities, wellbeing, rules and regulations, as well as enhancing the experience of fellow student nurses or midwives.
Nursing Associate Trainee of the Year
This award aims to recognise an outstanding final-year nursing associate trainee and to celebrate their ability to deliver safe, quality hands-on care and support the registered nursing workforce. Entrants must be able to demonstrate that they can take personal responsibility and work independently within defined parameters of practice, taking the appropriate initiative in a variety of situations and performing a range of clinical skills to deliver high-quality person-centred care.
Student Nurse of the Year: Learning Disabilities
This award aims to recognise and celebrate the unique nature of learning disabilities nursing, in which the focus is on encouraging this client group to participate in society and to promote and maintain health and wellbeing. The winner will be able to demonstrate the interpersonal skills required of nurses who enter this sector, and the ability to work with this client group in a way that enables them to maximise their independence, and respects their right to self-determination.
Mary Seacole Award for outstanding contribution to diversity and inclusion
This award aims to recognise a student who has made an exceptional contribution to creating a supportive and inclusive environment for their patients and/or other students and staff. They will have shown compassion and understanding of the needs of those from diverse backgrounds, for example, black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) or LGBT+, and demonstrated commitment and creativity to ensuring inclusion.
Practice Supervisor of the Year
Practice supervisors have the potential to shape student nurses or midwives and help inspire and motivate them throughout their course and then in their chosen career. Good supervisors demonstrate empathy with their student, adapting their coaching methods to suit the individual, and provide an environment that encourages questions, informed debate and learning.
This award recognises their important role in the education of student nurses and midwives. It is open to any registered nurse who is a practice supervisor working in acute, community, NHS or private settings mentoring students on placement, and who supervises one or more students (or will have done during the past 12 months to 31 December 2021).
Since last year, this award has replaced our previous category for mentors to reflect the updated terminology used by Nursing and Midwifery Council’s standards for student supervision and assessment, which came into effect in January 2019.
Student Nurse of the Year: Adult
This award aims to recognise an outstanding final-year student and to celebrate the breadth of learning needed to join this branch of the profession – from clinical skills to academic achievement, which underpin the treatment of all patients. In essence, entrants must combine the knowledge, skills and qualities required to excel. As a nurse entering adult nursing, the winner will have a broad understanding of a range of conditions and treatments, and demonstrate an in-depth understanding of the nursing profession and its responsibilities.
Educator of the year2
Excellent teaching is the foundation of future generations of nurses. Teachers can inspire, enthuse and motivate students; furthering their quest for knowledge and understanding.
Student Nurse or Midwife of the Year: Clinical Research
Clinical research nursing is an important and rapidly growing specialty, which promotes and develops the vital role of nurses in the delivery of high-quality clinical research. Ensuring a vibrant clinical research culture throughout the health and social care system is essential to finding new and innovative solutions to health and care needs.
This award aims to recognise and acknowledge a student nurse who has shown themselves to be a true advocate for clinical research, for example, by promoting it to their peers through their experience or raising the profile of clinical research placements through positive impacts.
The category is open to entries from pre-registration student nurses from both the health and social care sector. Placement providers may also nominate candidates.
Educator of the Year
Excellent teaching is the foundation of future generations of nurses. Teachers can inspire, enthuse and motivate students; furthering their quest for knowledge and understanding.
