By Pamela McGowan

Last updated 05:33, Friday, 23 May 2008

HEALTH workers who have come up with new ideas to help improve patient care are to be recognised through the Innovation Award.

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Mark Irving

The two finalists are specialist cancer nurse Mark Irving, who has developed a new online training course, and the Cumberland Infirmary’s infection control team, for their efforts to help eradicate hospital superbugs like MRSA.

Mark, who is based in Carlisle, has come up with an idea that will benefit staff and patients at both the Cumberland Infirmary and the West Cumberland Hospital.

He has given up his spare time to developing the e-learning tool to help colleagues broaden their horizons and gain a wider understanding of caring for cancer patients.

Dubbed the North Cumbria e-Learning Environment, the resource allows all hospital staff access to a wider range of learning tools online.

It will soon be launched across the two hospitals, giving nursing staff access to educational learning courses at any time of the day or night.

Mark has developed the north Cumbrian resource following his involvement with a similar tool for cancer specialist nurses internationally.

He is also a volunteer for a charity called Nurse Learning, which was launched after he joined forces with e-learning experts Ray Irving and Stuart Sutherland, from the University of Warwick. The charity has a website providing free online training for nurses and other health professionals involved in cancer care. The site has around 11,000 nurses from more than 100 countries and numbers continue to grow.

Mark said: “The cancer e-learning site was really developed to help link all the nurses caring for cancer patients in north Cumbria.”

“But after articles appeared in nursing magazines, we soon built up a national and international following. We really feel this has united all nurses caring for cancer patients. It has been a great challenge to develop north Cumbria’s own e-learning website for all nursing and I am very much looking forward to seeing its launch.”

The other finalist in the Innovation Award category is the infection control team at the Cumberland Infirmary. It was nominated for its work in helping prevent the spread of infections across the hospital.

To do this the team designed a free-standing hand-rub dispenser to be situated in the atrium by the main entrance, making it visible to everyone coming into the hospital.

The team developed the idea as part of its continuing drive to encourage visitors to use the dispensers, which are also situated at ward entrances and at patient bedsides.

One of the places where it was most difficult to raise awareness of the importance of hand-washing was at the main hospital entrance, so the team decided to install its own central hand-rub dispenser as none was available on the open market.

The dispenser has been so well used that the company which provides the hand-rub, Gojo International, has now decided to adopt the design and it has been launched in hospitals nationally and in the USA.

The infection control team of Sarah Nugent, Alex Galdins and Suzette Johnston joined forces with Carol Johnston, the trust’s patient environment action team (PEAT) co-ordinator, Hugh Cain, PEAT manager for Interserve, and Rowland Johnston, joiner, to make the hand-gel dispenser.