Could you be the RCN Nurse of the Year in the year of the nurse?

Entries open for the RCNi Nurse Awards 2020, your chance to promote your work and specialty

Could you be the RCN Nurse of the Year in the international year of the nurse?

The search for the RCN Nurse of the Year 2020 has begun with the launch of the profession’s most prestigious annual awards.

Awards open to nursing professionals across the UK

The RCNi Nurse Awards invites nurses, students and nursing support workers from across the UK to share their innovations and expertise and celebrate their contributions to improving patient care and outcomes.

Entries are open to individuals and teams in 11 categories that cover the diversity of nursing. Next year's awards coincide with the World Health Organization's international year of the nurse and midwife, which will put the nursing profession in the global spotlight.

RCNi Nurse Awards 2020: the categories

• Advanced Nurse Practitioner
• Child Health
• Community Nursing
• Excellence in Cancer Research Nursing, sponsored by Cancer Research UK
• Innovations in your Specialty
• Learning Disability Nursing
• Mental Health Nursing
• Nursing Student
• Nursing Support Worker, sponsored by the RCN
• Patient’s Choice
• Team of the Year

Recognising the Patient’s Choice

The Patient’s Choice category, which gives patients an opportunity to nominate a nurse or healthcare assistant who has made a difference to their lives, is decided by a public vote.

The RCN Nurse of the Year 2020 will be announced at the awards ceremony in London on July 8, having been chosen from the category winners.

RCN Nurse of the Year 2019 Taurai Matare transformed her ophthalmology unit at Whipps Cross Hospital in London, creating a one-stop eye centre, developing her nursing team and eradicating four-hour waiting time breeches.

Ms Matare said: ‘I’ve done things I never would have dreamed of and had amazing opportunities to network with nurses nationally and internationally. When the prime minister Boris Johnson came to visit me for a one-to-one meeting, that was something else.’

Highlight the work of your team, colleagues and specialty 

• The accolade has raised her profile at her trust, Barts Health, and further afield.
• ‘When I won, I didn’t realise how big it was,’ she said. ‘I am being flown to Australia to speak at a conference and next year have an invitation to speak in Singapore.
• ‘I now have a waiting list of nurses and healthcare assistants from all over London who want to join my team. Winning this award has made so many nurses interested in ophthalmology, my passion, as a career.’

‘2020 awards will be even more special’

RCNi managing director Rachel Armitage said: ‘We are always passionate about celebrating nursing excellence, but the 2020 international year of the nurse makes the RCNi Nurse Awards even more special this year.

‘We hope nurses from all specialties and backgrounds throughout the UK will enter to help us shine a light on the outstanding care delivered to patients day in and day out in these challenging times.’

The deadline for entries is January 17 2020.