The School of Health & Social Care

Professor’s award for patient-focused innovations

Page published 12 January 2011

Professor Gary Smith at the NHS Leadership Awards 2010

Bournemouth University’s (BU) School of Health & Social Care is celebrating a major award for one of its Visiting Professors.

Professor Gary Smith was named ‘Innovator of the Year’ at the prestigious National Health Service (NHS) Leadership Awards for 2010. A Consultant in Critical Care at the Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth, Professor Smith is a Visiting Professor to the University’s Centre of Postgraduate Medical Research and Education.

His award as Innovator of the Year recognises a series of innovations and co–inventions he’s introduced which focus on improving hospitals’ recognition of and response to patient deterioration.

In addition to his involvement in national educational initiatives to improve the recognition and management of sick patients, Professor Smith has introduced a number of innovations to tackle the problem of patient deterioration including:

the development of ALERT or Acute Life–threatening Events: Recognition and Treatment – a one–day course for general ward staff which now runs in over 200 centres world–wide;
the promotion of a consultant–led, multidisciplinary approach to critical care and the introduction of a philosophy of early intervention by ICU staff for acute illness on general wards;
leadership of the team that co–developed a hand–held, computer–based system (VitalPAC) for the early recognition of patient deterioration, now in use in other NHS hospitals;
the planning and development of the Portsmouth ‘Training, Education and Assessment by Medical Simulation’ (TEAMS) Centre, one of the early UK clinical simulation training centres;
the co–development of the ViEWS early warning score, being used as a basis for a national early warning score for detecting patient deterioration by the Royal College of Physicians;
co–development of the RSVP (Reason–Story–Vital Signs–Plan), a system to assist staff in communicating patient deterioration;
the invention of the “Chain of Prevention” – a paradigm for assisting hospitals to structure their care processes to prevent and detect patient deterioration and cardiac arrest.

“It is a great honour to receive this award,” said Professor Smith, “Patient deterioration is a major problem and failure to recognise, or act upon the signs of deterioration is a world–wide patient safety problem resulting in many deaths and other adverse patient outcomes.”

Professor Gail Thomas, Dean of BU’s School of Health and Social Care, praised Professor Smith’s contribution to providing new solutions for solving significant problems related to patient deterioration. “We’re very pleased to endorse Professor Smith’s status as a leading innovator whose achievements to date have brought countless positive results for patients and professionals in health care in the UK and around the world and are delighted that he is committed to working with us at Bournemouth University.”