The winners of the 2018 Patient Safety Awards have been revealed.

Victors were named across 20 categories in a ceremony hosted by Reverend Richard Coles on the first evening of the Patient Safety Congress, being held in Manchester.

In many instances, winners had achieved improvements without the need for significant additional investment. Instead, outcomes had been enhanced through improving processes or documentation.

The winner of the Best Patient Safety Initiative in A&E, for example, was Healthy London Partnership and Metropolitan Police Service for a new handover process when police attend A&E accompanying someone with mental health needs; the award for Cancer Care went to Belfast Health and Social Care Trust whose teams have improved the safety of chemotherapy prescribing by introducing a standard electronic form; and victors in the Quality Improvement Initiative of the Year were Oxford Academic Health Science Network Patient Safety Collaborative and East Berkshire Clinical Commissioning Group for a campaign which reduced urinary tract infections in care home residents.

Another key theme among the winning entries was staff engagement. At University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire Trust, winners of Patient Safety Team of the Year, a raft of measures was introduced to encourage staff to report incidents. Victors in the Education and Training category were Western Sussex Hospitals Foundation Trust, where a training programme in continuous improvement is now available to all staff across the organisation. And the Changing Culture award went to East Cheshire Trust, where non-clinical members of staff are now actively helping their clinical colleagues during times of severe operational pressure.

Now in their tenth year, the Patient Safety Awards recognise individuals, teams and organisations which have gone above and beyond in their commitment to deliver consistently safe care.

Click here for more details on the HSJ Patient Safety Awards 2018.