'Fantastic achievement' as regional health project takes top national award

NHS South Yorkshire ICB medicines management team and Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust, nutrition and dietetics team were winners in the Place-based Partnership and Integrated Care Award category at the 2024 HSJ awards.

The Rotherham Care Homes Hydration Project was launched in 2022 to address rising rates of urinary tract infections and antibiotic use in local care homes, after it was discovered that residents were ten times more likely to be dehydrated than people from their own homes.

By providing education and training to care home staff on hydration interventions, the project successfully improved hydration in older people, which cut the number of UTIs as well as the unnecessary use of antibiotics and even reduced the number of times ambulances were called.

Over 1000 care home staff received face-to-face training as part of the project which is now expanding across South Yorkshire.

Cindy Storer, deputy chief nurse at Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust, said: “We are so proud of our teams who have worked together to achieve such amazing results.

“It’s incredibly rewarding to see the direct impact the hydration project has had on the health and wellbeing of care home residents in Rotherham.

“We are excited for the continued impact the programme will have across South Yorkshire and beyond.”

Chris Edwards, executive place director for Rotherham and deputy chief officer at NHS South Yorkshire, said: “Winning an HSJ award is a fantastic achievement and we’re incredibly proud of our colleagues at NHS South Yorkshire and Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust.”

He added: “What makes this project more special for us is that we are now taking the success in Rotherham and rolling it out across the rest of South Yorkshire, which is great news as we head into the busy winter period.

“We’re also grateful for the platform to share our innovation with NHS colleagues from across the country – an initiative I hope inspires many other NHS teams to implement nationally.”