Posted on: 27 March 2023

Beth Crossland and Eugenia Moyo, Physical and Wellbeing Lead Nurses from two of our Addictions services (Hillingdon and Hounslow) won the tightly contested Infection Prevention Nurse of the Year award at the British Journal of Nursing Awards ceremony last Friday.

The event celebrates the hard work, dedication and excellence in nursing that has impacted and improved the quality of patients’ lives.AddictionsAward.jpg

At the event, Beth commented: “Finding out that Eugenia and I had been nominated for our work in pushing towards Hepatitis C Elimination was a wonderful surprise.

"Being shortlisted and eventually winning is surreal! I hope that this award will help raise the profile of blood-borne virus prevention, testing, and treatment, helping to bring us one step closer to elimination of Hepatitis C virus within our services and the whole of the UK.”

Eugenia agreed and added, “What a wonderful evening, what a wonderful occasion! The competition was tight, it's all still surreal. We could not have done it without the amazing team work of our colleagues who allowed us to work at our best. We were so grateful for the nomination, then being shortlisted and now the award, it's all surreal and may take months if not years to sink in."

Beth said: “I'm inspired daily by the truly life-saving work being done by nurses, recovery workers and all of our colleagues working in addictions, and am delighted to bring a spotlight to this vital and often-misunderstood field of healthcare”.

Jaya Karira, CNWL Addictions Area Manager for Hillingdon and Hounslow, congratulated Beth and Eugenia adding that they are “exceptional nurses, skilled at engaging patients who might otherwise not access treatment for their physical health needs”.

Jaya added: “this is a moment to reflect on the progress our Addictions services have made in addressing the often complex and unmet physical health needs of our patient group. We are achieving this step by step by working in partnership with hospital colleagues and Hep C U Later, an NHS addictions provider alliance which aims to eliminate Hepatitis C in our patient cohort.”

Both Addiction services are close to achieving micro-elimination in their respective areas as part of the wider goal of NHS England achieving Elimination of the Hepatitis C virus by 2025 an earlier target date than the WHO Elimination target of 2030.