STAFF from Darwen Health Centre have been nominated for prestigious national awards.

The practice has been shortlisted under three different categories at the General Practice Awards 2016, including Practice Manager of the Year, Nursing Team of the Year and Clinical Team of the Year.

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Practice manager Ann Neville was nominated from several of the 44 staff members at the James Street West health centre, including Dr Morris, who said Ann has made an ‘enormous difference’.

Dr Morris said: “Ann has worked tirelessly to improve the Quality of Life for Practice GPs who are at this time in the NHS under significant strain both locally and nationally.

“She has done this by practice workforce development and our staff morale and job satisfaction are at all-time highs as proven on regular staff satisfaction surveys.

“I nominated Ann for the enormous difference she has made to Darwen Healthcare and its patients. Ann has a ‘can-do’ attitude and embraces every opportunity to improve the practice.”

There are 12,400 patients registered at Darwen Health Centre and according to both GPs and senior nurses Ann led the work required to successfully reduce respiratory disease admissions.

She also worked with clinicians to develop the capacity and education within our nursing team to diagnose and manage pre-diabetes.

This resulted in 181 patients being diagnosed with pre-diabetes in 2015-16 with 67 per cent of patients improving their (HbA1c) sugar control within three months.

Ann Neville said: “This is really good news for the practice and that we have been recognised for the work that we have been doing.

“I am delighted to be nominated myself but also the staff including the nursing and clinical team.

“We have an active patient reference group who have also been dong surveys where we have had some great feedback.”

The General Practice Awards will be held at the Lancaster London Hotel on November 24 and are designed to recognise, highlight, and reward the hard work and innovation that gets carried out every day in surgeries up and down the UK.