Health & Social Care Bursary awards – high praise for ambulance staff’s innovation projects.

Congratulations to Paramedic Practitioner Kelly Marquis who won the second place prize in the annual Insurance Corporation Health & Social Care Bursary.

Kelly’s Falls Prevention and Management project aims to provide emergency lifting equipment to Community Services, to improve the efficiencies of patient care and costs and avoiding prolonged issues resultant from long-lie injuries.

The judges were so impressed with Kelly’s idea that it was announced that her runners-up prize of one thousand pounds would be boosted to three thousand pounds in a joint venture between Insurance Corporation, HSC and St John Ambulance Guernsey, meaning a special lifting chair for her project will soon be available within the community.

During her presentation Kelly explained that falls account for a significant proportion of calls to the Guernsey ambulance service. In 2020, 731 people called 999 following a fall, however many of these were non-injured fallers, placing added strain on Emergency Services.

Emergency Medical Technician Nick Davison was highly commended and received very worthy recognition for his proposal “This is MY voice”. The idea was to enable service users the chance to keep their voice when injury diseases, such as MNR, Parkinsons and MS, have the potential to take it away. By recording and preserving the voice digitally, the scheme will future-proof service users ability to help communicate with friends and family later.

Both Kelly and Nick were commended for thinking outside of the ‘999’ emergency ‘box’ and looking for initiatives that are preventative. Their thinking aligns to the HSC Partnership of Purpose and the ambulance service’s future development of urgent and community care and public health.

Guernsey’s Bailiff, Richard McMahon announced the winners of the 2022 Health & Social Care Bursary at a ceremony last week, in the presence of the President of the Committee for Health & Social Care, Deputy Al Brouard. The overall winners were Nicola Cross and Hayley Bearman for their ‘Step Forward’ project, which aims to encourage patients discharged from hospital to be motivated to become more mobile by the use of a pedometer.

The annual Insurance Corporation Health & Social Care Bursary is the only awards scheme in the Bailiwick promoting and celebrating health and wellbeing in the Bailiwick. Each year we invite staff from HSC to submit ideas to improve the health or social care provision in the Bailiwick.

The Insurance Corporation Health and Social Care Bursary was established by Peter Walpole the founder of Insurance Corporation, who realised healthcare employees had lots of innovative ideas but no obvious method of obtaining funding or support to make their concept become a reality.

(Photos by Chris George)