A nurse who has improved the reporting of vulnerable adults by healthcare staff has been shortlisted for a prestigious UK award

Christine Hodby, who works for NHS West Suffolk Clinical Commissioning Group and NHS Ipswich and East Suffolk Clinical Commissioning Group, is a finalist in the Leadership category of the RCNi Nurse Awards 2019. The profession’s top accolade for nursing excellence attracted almost 700 entries this year.

She will find out whether she has won at a ceremony in the Westminster Park Plaza hotel, London, on July 3. The RCN Nurse of the Year 2019, selected from all the category winners, will be announced on the night.

A multi-agency review of safeguarding for adults in Suffolk determined that healthcare providers needed to have an equal voice with police and social care services in county-wide decisions on systems and policy.

The county’s designated nurse for safeguarding adults, Christine Hodby, has made this strategic vision a reality, never forgetting her nursing roots or her patients’ rights. She fights tirelessly for vulnerable adults and ensures their health is central to all decisions. Nurses attend meetings with police and social care teams.

Crucially she developed a threshold framework so that staff at organisations varying from health to social services, police, local government and religious institutions can determine when to refer to healthcare services. She influences county-wide policies and has secured funding for two nurse colleagues to support her.

Ms Hodby says: ‘I am very excited and honoured to be a finalist in the RCNI Nurse Awards. I felt enormously proud to be nominated by my team and pleased for them too that all their hard work in working with me is also being acknowledged by my shortlisting as a finalist in these prestigious awards.’

The award is supported by RCNi journal Nursing Management. Managing director Rachel Armitage says: ‘Nurses in all areas are increasingly under pressure but they still deliver exceptional innovation and outstanding, compassionate patient care day in, day out.

‘The RCNi Nurse Awards are a chance to recognise the achievements of nurses like Chirstine and showcase nursing excellence.

‘Our judging panel has faced an almost impossible task in selecting a shortlist from hundreds of high-quality entries this year. We look forward to celebrating the strength and diversity of our profession at the awards in July.’