Award-winning West End nurse hopes gong can help continue vital work bringing care to city food bank

An award-winning West End nurse is desperate to find the funding to continue providing a vital service to one of Newcastle's food banks..

Becky Shearer is a Queen's Nurse and advanced nurse practitioner at the West Road Medical Centre. For well over a year she has been visiting the West End Food Bank in order to bring health advice and help navigating the NHS into the community where people need it most.

Her work there involves addressing basic health needs with a "one-stop" clinic, once a month. For the first months of the project, extra funding meant she was able to be at the food bank once a week - and she said this had made a huge difference.

This work has recently seen the project win the Nursing in Primary Care award at the annual Nursing Times awards, held in London.

Becky told ChronicleLive more about the project. She said: "It's been about making primary care accessible in the community and to vulnerable people who may have had problems or difficulties accessing the health system. It has involved a lot of signposting, helping people to make GP appointments and perhaps things where they may not realise they can refer themselves to services - like physio or mental health.

"Sometimes too I have spoken to a patient with what they thought was a respiratory problem but may have been something such as hypertension."

She said she had been thrilled to receive the award. She added: "Part of the reason I applied for the award is that the the project has lost its funding. Since the start of this year I have only been able to attend once a month on a voluntary basis.

"But I think if people know you are there once a week then they know they are able to contact you and get the help they need. It is hard if I am trying to sort out problems for someone and then I don't see them for another four weeks."

Becky added that the award was a huge honour for the practice. She said: "I think the judges saw the vision and thinking outside of the box and the taking of primary care services out into the community. And this is a transferrable project. It can really help in any food bank setting. The evening felt really special."

Along with the award win, the project was also shortlisted for the Dame Elizabeth Anionwu Award for Inclusivity in Nursing and Midwifery.

In their comments, the award's judges said: "Congratulations to West Road Medical Centre. The Primary Care Partnerships Project addresses the needs of marginalised populations in a highly deprived area.

"The nurse-led initiative fosters relationships with local services, helping individuals access primary care and reducing health inequalities through holistic education and effective signposting. The judges said it was a visionary and innovative initiative, which demonstrates that a nurse in the right place at the right time can make a big difference.

"Working collaboratively with third sector organisations, it has improved social and health outcomes for individuals and picks up the unmet need in a holistic, compassionate and non-judgemental manner. It brings hope and transformation to those who deserve it most."

Editor of Nursing Times, Steve Ford, said: "The Nursing Times Awards are an opportunity each year to celebrate all that is brilliant about nursing and midwifery, showcasing the innovation, energy and dedication of nurses and midwives across the UK.

“Once again, the quantity and standard of entries has been extremely high and to be shortlisted, let alone win a category, is a great achievement that marks out individuals and teams as truly exceptional in their area of work."

Other winners at the awards include teams from both the Newcastle Hospitals and South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS trusts - which picked up gongs for work helping young patients with diabetes and using virtual reality technology to help train nurses and midwives respectively.