Clatterbridge staff involved in a pioneering cancer care initiative have been named Team of the Year at a prestigious healthcare awards ceremony.
The Nursing Times Awards 2025 honoured the team behind the Urgent Cancer Care (UCC) programme, a collaboration between The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre (CCC), Cheshire and Merseyside Cancer Alliance (CMCA) and the region’s Urgent and Emergency Care Network.
The UCC initiative – the only one of its kind in the country – helps patients in need of emergency support and was shortlisted in three categories of the NT Awards, held last night in London: Team of the Year, the Critical and Emergency Care Nursing Award and an Ingrid Fuchs Cancer Nursing Award.
UCC is an important element of many cancer patients’ journeys, addressing the unplanned care needs of those people who become unwell due to a new emergency diagnosis of cancer, side effects of cancer treatment, or worsening symptoms related to cancer progression and other health issues.
The team recently published a UCC strategy, and the vision and mission for transforming UCC is to ensure that all cancer patients in Cheshire and Merseyside with urgent care needs receive timely, effective, and equitable treatment. The goal has been to seamlessly integrate oncology and urgent care teams, enhancing outcomes through education, advanced protocols, and continuous data-driven innovation.
Judges said it was a “highly impressive, innovative and impactful initiative led by passionate, inspirational nurses. They demonstrated an admirable team ethos by making key issues everybody’s responsibility, supporting transferability of ideas and practices”.
CCC Chief Executive Joan Spencer who is the SRO for the UCCP was at the awards ceremony after being personally shortlisted in the Nurse Leader of the Year category, said: “We are overjoyed that this amazing initiative has been recognised on a national level and the team that worked so hard to implement it has been honoured with this award.
“This has been a successful collaboration between Clatterbridge and the Cancer Alliance, with expert input from NHS trusts across Cheshire and Merseyside and leaders from our hospital partners in Liverpool. It has been a team effort to give cancer patients in our region a new, improved service when they need it most.”
Jon Hayes, CMCA Managing Director, said: “We are delighted that this dedicated team has been honoured by the Nursing Times for delivering this unique improvement programme. CMCA is the first cancer alliance in the country to acknowledge UCC as a priority, develop a strategy and fund a UCC improvement programme.
“In the past year, the Cancer Alliance in collaboration with CCC has made substantial progress in transforming UCC across Cheshire and Merseyside and this initiative can be a template for change right across the country – giving cancer patients reassurance that if they need urgent care, it will be available and tailored to their needs.”
Also at the awards ceremony was Alison Taylor, CCC Nurse Consultant in Acute Oncology, who had been shortlisted as Nurse of the Year, and the enhanced supportive care service for hepato-pancreato-biliary cancer patients – initiated by CCC’s Sinead Benson, Clinical Nurse Specialist in Palliative Care – was also a finalist in the Ingrid Fuchs category.
