Care UK mental health nurse reaches final of RCNi awards

Company news

May 23, 2018

Congratulations to Vanessa Wright, mental health lead nurse at Care UK’s West Midlands Integrated Urgent Care service, for reaching the final of the RCNi Nurse Awards 2018.

Vanessa, who is one of five finalists in the Mental Health Practice award category, said “I decided it was worthwhile putting an entry in for the mental health development work we have been doing in the West Midlands Integrated Urgent Care service. I believe there were 800 applicants overall.

“On 1 May I presented to a panel of five judges, followed by a Q&A session. I was pleased to see that they were really interested in the work we had been doing, and were impressed with some of the data we have been able to collect. I’ve had confirmation that I have been shortlisted to the top five entries for the mental health category – which is pretty awesome.

“My day to day role varies hugely. The last 12 months I’ve been developing a new team, linking in with external mental health trusts, and trying to improve our service. We have been able to gain access to direct referral into some secondary care providers which allows a much smoother patient journey and we have interest in being set up as a 24 hour crisis line across some areas, which is fantastic.

“We have developed and built upon adapting an audit tool and clinical competencies for the mental health clinicians, which we use to ensure calls are safe and appropriately managed, but also to allow clinicians to develop and learn from each call, so we are constantly striving to improve.”

The RCNi Nurse Awards 2018 take place on 4 July.