Shared Care Pathology team wins award

The Derbyshire Shared Care Pathology team has received a Royal College of Pathology (RCPath) Achievement award in recognition for their hard work and commitment to improving patient care.

The RCPath launched its Achievement Awards to acknowledge the high standard of work across the pathology community. They invited nominations for teams and individuals, of all professional backgrounds and disciplines.

The winners received their awards in person at the College President’s Annual Dinner 8 September 2022.

The Derbyshire Shared Care Pathology team have worked for several years to produce evidence-based best practice guidelines. In 2011, Consultant Clinical Scientist Dr Nigel Lawson teamed up with laboratory scientists to collaborate with local clinicians from primary and secondary care.

This work has enabled a better understanding of the needs a GP has, thereby allowing the service to make changes towards improving patient management. The pathology team have produced guidelines to enable better comprehension and explanation of diagnostics, requesting and interpretating test results.

These guidelines are accessible online and are widely appreciated by colleagues in primary care and secondary care both regionally and nationally.

Dr Penny Blackwell, GP Lead for Shared Care Pathology in Derby and Derbyshire, said she was delighted with the award and proud of the work the team have done.

“Thank you to you all those GPs and consultant colleagues who have input and sense-checked the guidelines on the website over the years – we know from emails that we receive that they are appreciated by primary care and secondary care both regionally and nationally.

“We could not put these guidelines together without input from you all and it’s great to have all the hard work recognised by the college.”