Awards and accolades

3 prominent cancer researchers from The Christie have been given prestigious Senior Investigator status by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). Professor Janelle Yorke, The Christie’s Executive Chief Nurse, and Professor Corinne Faivre-Finn, Honorary Consultant in Clinical Oncology are both new appointees. Professor Janelle Yorke is the first Chief Nurse to have ever been given the award.

Professor Tim Illidge, Professor of Targeted Therapy and Oncology has been reappointed for a second term.

Senior Investigator status is awarded according to a number of criteria, including quality and volume of internationally excellent research, impact on improvements in healthcare and engagement with the public and healthcare policymakers.

The exceptional contribution of 3 Christie colleagues to cancer services, research and education has been recognised by the Manchester Academic Health Science Centre (MAHSC) and awarded Honorary Clinical Chairs for 2022:

• Professor Omer Aziz (colorectal and peritoneal cancer surgeon) has been recognised for his leadership of practice-shaping research in peritoneal cancers and his dedication to teaching and training internationally to improve outcomes for patients with these rare tumours.
• Professor Ed Smith (clinical oncologist) is an international opinion leader in the field of proton beam therapy having led the realisation of the first UK-based high energy NHS proton beam therapy service since its inception in 2008 and chairs the national Proton Research Committee.
• Professor Raffaele Califano (medical oncologist) has led on several landmark practice changing clinical trials improving outcomes for lung cancer patients with advanced disease and is an internationally recognised educator committed to developing the next generation of oncologists.

The MAHSC Honorary Clinical Chairs are awarded annually by The University of Manchester’s Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health Promotions Committee. Meanwhile, Professor David Thomson has been appointed as an Honorary Clinical Professor at the University of Liverpool in recognition of his expertise in radiotherapy and proton beam therapy research, having achieved a substantial national and international reputation in his field of head and neck oncology as a consultant at The Christie.

Congratulations to the Trust’s clinical coding team which won the Clinical Coding and Data Quality in Specialist Hospitals Award, at the recent Capita Healthcare Decisions CHKS Awards 2022. The award recognises clinical coding depth and quality, and demonstrates our Team’s diligence, commitment and expertise.

Congratulations to Professor Timothy Illidge, Professor of targeted therapy and oncology who has been elected as a Fellow of The Academy of Medical Sciences.

The Academy of Medical Sciences is the independent body in the UK representing the diversity of medical science. Its elected Fellows are the UK’s leading medical scientists from hospitals, academia, industry and the public service, all with a mission to advance biomedical and health research and its translation into benefits for society.

Professor Illidge's work as a clinician scientist and his laboratory programme has been supported by Cancer Research UK for over 20 years and his research has changed clinical practice in Hodgkin lymphoma and improved outcomes in Non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Congratulations to our complementary health and wellbeing team which recently won a Mental Health award at the Integrative Health Convention in recognition for the staff service it has provided since the start of the pandemic. The SOS (Supporting our Staff) initiative, uses complementary therapies to enhance resilience and wellbeing. Set up due to the complex pressures causes by COVID-19, this service continues to deliver both virtual and face to face interventions, providing bespoke physiological and psychological support.

Over 200 staff have accessed the service so far, with staff reporting the benefits in both their work and home life. A common quote is ‘life changing’, especially after supporting staff who felt claustrophobic, enabling them to wear PPE, and remain working onsite.

The team scooped a national award for its commitment to patients living with incurable blood cancer. The haematology team was presented with the Myeloma UK Clinical Service Excellence Programme (CSEP) Award in recognition of its outstanding care and unflagging dedication to patients with myeloma, an incurable blood cancer which claims the lives of 3,000 people in the UK each year.

The accolade, awarded by charity Myeloma UK, recognises hospitals’ commitment to raising the bar for treatment and providing compassionate and individualised care to patients.

Our proton beam therapy team made it to the final of The Sun’s ‘Who Cares Wins’ awards. They were nominated in the ‘Best Team’ category.

2 Christie teams were successful at these awards on 18 October 2022. The Commitment to Equality Award was won by the Digital Experimental Cancer Medicine Team, and the MyChristie-MyHealth ePROMS Team won the Innovation Award.

In addition, our Bloods Closer to Home team was highly commended in the same category.

The One Stop Lung Cancer Clinic Team (a partnership between The Christie, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, and the Greater Manchester Cancer Alliance) was the joint winner of the Patients’ Choice Award and was highly commended in the Outstanding Care Award. Colleagues from The Christie were also involved in 2 research projects that made the final shortlist at the awards, the Genito-Urinary Cancer Research Group, and the RECAP study.

In this year’s Nursing Times Awards, 2 Christie teams were finalists. The Bloods Closer to Home team from SACT services was a finalist in the Cancer Nursing category, and our complementary therapy team was a finalist in the HRH The Prince of Wales award for integrated approaches to care for its entry ‘Address the Distress’.

The bloods closer to home service is funded by The Christie charity and run by Christie staff, operates from 10 convenient locations across Greater Manchester and Cheshire. The service is available at The Christie’s 3 local radiotherapy treatment centres (in Oldham, Salford and Macclesfield), as well as health centres, district hospitals and hospices.

The Christie was also the winner of the ‘Best Social Responsibility’ category at the Nursing Times Workforce Summit and Awards 2022. The Christie NHS Foundation was the winner of Best Social Responsibility category for work on the Climate Emergency and engagement with the local community, to raise awareness of the climate crisis, and the significant risks to public health. The judges praised The Christie Green-Up Campaign as a shining example of leading with passion, which was evident in the nomination. The passion of Angela Hayes, who led this work, was palpable and a significant contributor to its success. Angela has gone above and beyond to demonstrate that nursing should and can have a strong voice in social responsibility and sustainability, and was outstanding in this category.

Congratulations to the team which delivers the Oncology Pathways Digital Clinical Placement and which has reached the final of the Nursing Times Student Awards - Best clinical placement of the year (hospital). Last year we delivered an additional 334 clinical placements and this year we are on target for 900 additional placements.

The Christie has been named as one of the inaugural European Prostate Cancer Centres of Excellence. The specialist cancer centre in Manchester is the only facility in the UK to be given the accreditation.

Dr Matthew Krebs, research project manager Kate Duffus and team received the Healthcare Project of the Year Bionow Award 2022 for the DETERMINE trial: Identifying new treatments for patients with rare cancers. This award recognises the leadership from The University of Manchester along with CRUK CDD, The Royal Marsden Hospital/ICR, The University of Birmingham, The Christie and key pharmaceutical partners, who together have been instrumental in the development and delivery of this complex trial for patients of all ages.

The Christie has been awarded the prestigious Platinum accreditation by Transport for Greater Manchester for our work in supporting ‘on foot’ and ‘by bike’ travel and using electric vehicles. The Christie is one of only a few organisations to reach the new Platinum standard in creating a long-term cultural change by encouraging sustainable travel. 

The Trust has once again received accreditation from the Joint Advisory Group on GI Endoscopy from the Royal College of Physicians.

The Royal College of Radiologists (RCR) has created new excellence awards to recognise and celebrate individual contributions to the RCR’s COVID-19 response. Congratulations to consultant Ganesh Radhakrishna who was awarded a COVID-19 Outstanding Contribution Award for contributing huge amounts of time and making rapid decisions allowing the RCR to provide continued high-quality online professional development support in an uncertain environment. 

We were delighted to be shortlisted in 3 award categories at this year’s Nursing Times Awards. The chemotherapy team was shortlisted twice, in the ‘Cancer Nursing’ and ‘Nursing in the Community’ categories, and we were also shortlisted for the ‘Empowering nurses to enable digital improvement’ award.

In the RCNi Awards, our research nursing team was a finalist in the ‘Excellence in cancer research nursing’ category.

Colleagues from radiotherapy education, the proton beam therapy service and the digital team won the Creative Provision of Practice Placements award in the Chief Allied Health Professions Officer (CAHPO) Awards 2021. The team won the award for the ‘creative provision of placements’.

The winning project involved redesigning clinical practice placements for trainee radiographers learning about proton beam therapy.

Congratulations to Christie staff who were amongst more than 115 people nationally to have won the ‘cancer team of the year' at the BMJ awards. The project aimed to create, for the first time, a standardised informed consent process and forms for radiotherapy patients. The RCR brought together clinical oncology consultants, trainees, radiographers, nurses, patients, lawyers and risk communication experts.

The team in MRI scanning was one of 5 finalists in the BMJ awards for its work to streamline MRI scanning during the pandemic. The team was noted in the Diagnostic Team of the Year category for using accelerated protocols which negated the need to outsource our scanning as other Trusts had done, managing to recover from the pandemic more quickly than most Trusts in the UK.

Congratulations to the complementary health and wellbeing team who won an award for the staff service they provide supporting colleagues during the pandemic. The team was named as winners in the mental health category in the Complementary Therapy Awards 2022.

Dr Heather Williams, consultant medical physicist for nuclear medicine received an MBE from the Deputy Lieutenant of Greater Manchester at a ceremony in December 2021. Dr Williams was awarded the honour for services to diversity and inclusion in science.

Clinical scientist Rob Chuter was successful in winning a £10,000 grant from the North West Greener NHS Innovation Fund to examine the carbon footprint of radiotherapy treatments for patients.

Congratulations to Professor Tim Illidge who has been awarded the Skegg medal by the Royal College of Radiologists (RCR). Tim gave the medal lecture at Central Westminster Hall at the RCR graduation in front of a large audience.

Tim has previously received the RCR gold medal. This is the highest honour the college endows for outstanding contribution. 

At the annual Greater Manchester Clinical Research Awards in November, the Experimental Cancer Medicine Team received the Research Team of the Year award. As well as this, the Early Career Researcher of the Year award went to Haematology TYA clinical nurse specialist, Kate Law. 

Greater Manchester Research Education Team - a collaboration between The Christie, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust and Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh NHS Foundation Trust was also a runner up for the Outstanding Contribution award. 

More than 200 nominations were received across Greater Manchester, East Cheshire and East Lancashire. In 13 awards categories there were submissions from all 14 of the Greater Manchester trusts, primary care, academia and other local partners. The ceremony took place following a record year for CRN GM in which 82,896 participants were recruited across 1,052 research studies. This made Greater Manchester the third highest recruiting CRN in England and the highest recruiting based on recruitment per 1,000 population (28.2 per 1,000).

Congratulations to The Christie at Oldham, winners of the Rotary of Oldham’s community shield for services to the community.

Congratulations to consultant endocrinologist Claire Higham who has been awarded a Medical Research Council (MRC) Clinical Academic Research Partnerships (CARP) fellowship.

CARP is for NHS consultants with a PhD, MD or equivalent higher research degree but who are not currently research active. It allows these consultants to participate in collaborative, high-quality research partnerships with established biomedical researchers.

Professor John Radford has become president of Lymphoma Action, having had a long standing association with the charity. He’s narrated videos, spoken at patient conferences, reviewed their information resources and been a long-term member of their Medical Advisory Panel, which he will now chair in his new role.

Professor Radford's team at The Christie already work closely with Lymphoma Action, speaking at events and advising on forthcoming clinical trials.

The International Association for the study of Lung Cancer selected Professor Corinne Faivre-Finn as the recipient of the prestigious 2019 James D. Cox Lectureship Award for Radiation Oncology in recognition of her long-standing work in the field of radiation oncology. The IASLC gave the award to Corinne for her extensive contributions in the lung cancer arena. She accepted the award and gave a lecture at the Word Conference on Lung Cancer in Barcelona.

The children and staff at The Christie Day Nursery are very proud to have received the Bronze Award from Eco-Schools to recognise their achievement in working towards a sustainable lifestyle.

The Eco-Schools Green Flag is an internationally recognised award for excellence in environmental action and learning. You can work up to Green Flag level by achieving Bronze and Silver awards which are self-accredited stepping stones along the way.

The nursery now has an eco-committee of staff, children and parents called the Little Planet Savers.

Sharon Woolley and her team of research nurses were runners up in this year’s RCNi Nurse Awards 2020. They were one of only 61 entries shortlisted out of nearly 700 contenders.

Sharon’s team was a finalist in the Excellence in Cancer Research Nursing award for their entry ‘Supporting the educational needs of clinical research staff in Greater Manchester’.

Well done to all!

Two of The Christie’s digital services team beat hundreds of competitors to make it onto the shortlist for the coveted Women in Tech Excellence Awards this year.

Tiegan Price and Nicola Warburton beat off a record number of nominations for the awards run by one of the industry’s leading publications, Computing. Tiegan was shortlisted as the Rising Star of the Year: Public Sector and Universities category. Tiegan’s manager, Nicola Warburton, head of product, was shortlisted in the Team Leader of the Year: SME category for the awards.

Congratulations to Lorraine Burgess, our dementia consultant Nurse who was a finalist in the National Dementia Awards 2020 in the category of Best Dementia Practitioner.

Dr Heather Williams, consultant medical physicist for nuclear medicine at The Christie NHS Foundation Trust has been awarded an MBE for services to diversity and inclusion in science.

In 2012 Dr Williams established Science Grrl, a grassroots national network to celebrate and support women in science. Today she acts as one of two directors of the not-for-profit group, overseeing a range of national activities, co-ordinating the website and organising regular events across the UK.

For her work Dr Williams was made an alumni laureate by the University of Nottingham in 2015, and in 2017 she was awarded the Institute of Physics (IOP) Phillips Award for distinguished service to the IOP through the Women in Physics Group. Dr Williams is also the former secretary and chair of the IOP's Women in Physics group committee.

Congratulations to Professor Fiona Blackhall who has received the 2020 Heine H. Hansen Award, which is jointly bestowed by ESMO and the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC). The award, which recognises an individual’s personal contribution to lung cancer research pays tribute to Professor Hansen, a thoracic oncology specialist.

Congratulations to our team of radiographers who have won North West team of the year from the North West Society of Radiographers. The team has now been put forward for the national finals which will be presented in London in November.

Christine Outram, Chair of The Christie board of directors has been awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday honours list.

The award is recognition for Chris’s huge contribution to the NHS over more than three decades, and the visionary leadership she has demonstrated, with more than 20 years' experience driving improvements at an executive level. Since October 2014, Chris has served in the capacity of Chair of The Christie board.

Congratulations to clinical nurse specialist Sharon Jackson and IT specialist Andrea Webber who have been nominated for an award at the Connect Conference in Blackpool for the electronic prescribing for transfusion project. This is now live on all inpatient wards and outpatients at The Christie.

Congratulations to Gary Thirkell who has been awarded honorary membership of the Infection Prevention Society for his outstanding contribution to their work.

Congratulations to nurse specialist Helen Johnson who was named Urology Nurse of the Year by the British Association of Urological Nurses (BAUN).

We are delighted to have been named as one of the 100 best specialist hospitals in the world by Newsweek magazine – one of the highest profile publications in the USA. We share this accolade with a small group of the world’s elite specialist hospitals.

The survey identifies those hospitals with the best clinical care, patient experience and reputation in the world and puts The Christie in the same league as the major US cancer centres in New York and Texas and also some of the world’s leading cardiac, children’s and trauma centres.

Congratulations to the lung nursing team who were nominated for a Macmillan professionals award in the innovation excellence category. The team were one of only eight teams to be nominated nationally.

Congratulations to the digital services team who have received Level 1 accreditation under the ‘Excellence in Informatics’ skills development programme. Based on standards promoting the personal and professional development of staff, the programme helps to ensure informatics in the North West is recognised for a proactive approach in supporting healthcare. Currently only 53% of organisations in the North West are accredited.

The Christie has, once again, achieved excellent results in the national inpatient survey 2018 and was ranked in the ‘better than most other trusts’ category for 56 of the 61 questions. The survey is commissioned by the CQC and the results are used as part of their regulation, monitoring and inspection of NHS acute trusts in England. 

Senior clinicians from The Christie NHS Foundation Trust have been honoured with prestigious promotions from The University of Manchester. Congratulations to Dr Emma Crosbie, Dr Fiona Thistlethwaite, Dr Adrian Bloor, Dr Julia Handley and Dr Was Mansoor.

The Academy of Medical Sciences has awarded Fellowships to Director of Research, Professor John Radford and Professor Rob Bristow our Chief Academic Officer.

In total, 50 of the UK’s leading figures within biomedical and health sciences were elected this year, with Professor Bristow and Professor Radford being the only two new fellows from the North West. They have been selected for their outstanding contributions to advancing medical science, cutting edge research discoveries, and translating developments into benefits for patients and wider society.

The Christie has recently become a member of the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC), joining over 1,100 organisations in more than 170 countries.

Our international team received recognition at the ‘BD Ports Northern Powerhouse Export Awards’ winning an award in the ‘new to export’ category. This was for its part in a consortium that was selected to provide expert consultancy advice to the Rong Qiao group in China, in partnership with NHS Northumbria International Alliance.

Congratulations to Michelle Davies who has been shortlisted in the Nursing Times awards for Nurse of the Year. Michelle is our Advanced Nurse Practitioner who works for the NIHR Manchester Clinical Research Facility. The Christie has also been shortlisted for the Cancer Nursing award.

Congratulations to Claire Dickinson and Elaine Blowers who were finalists in the RCNi Nursingawards for Excellence in Cancer Research. They were praised for their Trust-wide work to raise awareness of clinical trials for patients.

Congratulations to the Acute Oncology/Acute Kidney Injury team who have been shortlisted in the HSJ Patient Safety Awards. As finalists in the Cancer Care Initiative of the Year category, they were praised for mitigating the risk of acute kidney injury during treatment.