Staff Nursing Care Awards 2025

Here’s your opportunity to be part of one of the biggest celebrations of excellence in nursing care in the care home and residential care settings in Northern Ireland. The Staff Nursing Care Awards 2025 will recognise individuals and teams who have demonstrated outstanding innovation and clinical excellence in their work.

If you are a potential award-winning care professional or your team or establishment has excelled in a certain area, you could be a winner of one of our prestigious awards.

The Staff Nursing Care Awards set out to reward good practice and to celebrate achievements. The awards recognise innovation and outstanding clinical excellence in healthcare professionals in care homes, residential care settings and domiciliary care teams across Northern Ireland. This year we are also looking for the healthcare student of the year who excelled during their placement in a care setting.

We want to shine a light on the vital work that is being done to provide the care and support that is need to provide those in care homes with the quality of life we would want for ourselves in later life.

The closing date for nominations is Friday 28 February 2025. Entries can be submitted from Friday 1 November 2024.

The judges will consider all entries and will decide on the finalists for each category.

The names of the finalists will be posted on this website, circulated to everyone who has submitted an entry, and to the media.

Who can enter?

The awards are open to those working in independent nursing and residential care homes, domiciliary care teams, and healthcare students in Northern Ireland.

How to Enter

Entries open on 1 November 2024 and must be submitted online here. In no more than 500 words entries should show how they meet the criteria for the category entered. No additional material, references or links to online information will be considered.

The categories and judging criteria are listed below. Click on a category to view the criteria.

Categories and Criteria

Innovation in the care of people with ‘Memory Loss’

This category is open to homes, organisations or individuals that can demonstrate innovative work that has improved the quality of life for residents through innovative working practices. The judges will also look for the effective and appropriate involvement of family members, volunteers and external community resources and opportunities for residents to experience familiar and new places of interest and to meet a broad range of people outside their normal encounters within the home.

Advancement in Nutritional Wellbeing

Dignity through Continence Care

Home Manager of the Year

Registered Nurse of the Year

This award will recognise someone who patients and colleagues identify as an outstanding nursing professional. The judges will look for evidence that this individual has made a real difference to the provision of care in their unit. They will want evidence that the individual’s efforts and imagination have improved patient care and safety and has been a champion of infection prevention. This could be through leading improvement projects, innovative collaboration with their nursing peers and the wider multi-disciplinary team, or overcoming significant obstacles in their place of work.

Nursing Student of the Year

Healthcare Assistant of the Year

The judges will be looking for someone who consistently puts those in their care first – a compassionate, skilled and dependable patient/resident focussed individual. Evidence will be needed to show that the healthcare assistant has supported individual choice, maintained dignity, promoted independence and infection prevention, and has gone beyond basic duties to deliver the best of care. The judges will be looking for someone who has championed resident advocacy, actively engaged in personal and professional development and acted as an ambassador for their professional code of practice.

Administrator of the Year

Investment in Training Award

This award will identify the home that provides a wide-ranging and high quality training syllabus for their staff. The evidence should prove that they facilitate training initiatives and programmes to develop the team’s knowledge and skills to improve the delivery of care within their setting. This award will not be presented to the company that simply spends the most time on training but one that demonstrates it embraces a culture of continuous learning and development by providing a variety of educational opportunities.

Ancillary Care Worker of the Year

Nursing Home of the Year

Residential Care Home of the Year

Care Home Group of the Year (open to a group with two or more homes)

The provision of high quality End of Life Care

This award will go to the home or organisation that has implemented a high quality process for the care of residents approaching the end of life. The judges will be looking for the proactive identification of the illnesses that will trigger an end of life care plan that has been agreed in advance by the resident and their family. This person-centred approach will ensure that, whenever possible, the resident’s preferred place of death has been achieved. The judges will also be looking for evidence of reduced hospital admissions and deaths in hospital and recognition by families of the quality of the end of life care that has been provided for their relative.

Creative Use of the Environment

Want some tips and tricks for writing your award entry? click here to read our article.

ENTER NOW!

Awards Dinner - Titanic Belfast, Thursday 28 May 2025

BOOK YOUR TICKETS

Our Gala Dinner is on Thursday 28 May 2025 in Titanic Belfast and hosted by BBC presenter Claire McCollum.

Join us for what will be a fantastic evening, you can book a table of 10 costing £1200 or individual seats are available at £135 each.

Click here to book places at the Staff Nursing Care Awards Dinner

THANK YOU TO ALL OUR SPONSORS!

Your generosity is incredible and it’s because of your support, this event is as fabulous as it is!