A LOCAL leader for nurses specialising in learning disabilities is part of a winning team honoured at the 2016 RCNi Nursing Awards.

Phil Boulter, of Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, was part of the team that won the Learning Disability Nursing Award with its Health Equalities Framework (HEF) tool designed to improve the life expectancy of people with learning disabilities.

The HEF, which was designed, delivered and evaluated by a team of consultant nurses from across the UK, uses a simple rating system to identify health inequalities and their causes in people with learning disabilities, as well as exploring what can be done to tackle them.

Inequalities ranging from genetic and biological problems, through to communicative problems, are thought to be part of the reason why people with learning disabilities are twice as likely to experience health problems and 58 times more likely to die prematurely than the general population.

“My colleagues and I were delighted and honoured to have received the RCNi Learning Disability Nurse of the Year Award in recognition of our work in developing the HEF,” he said. “We have spent the last four years producing and updating our original framework, which was born out of concerns that people with a learning disability experience reduced healthy life expectancy.”

Although the tool was originally designed for nurses, it has since been implemented in a number of other healthcare disciplines.

Mr Boulter heads more than one hundred learning disability nurses at Surrey and Borders Partnership and holds advisory roles for a number of organisations, including the National Patient Safety Agency, the Health Ombudsman and the Department of Health. He is also a foundation trust governor, representing the interests of all qualified nursing staff in trust decision making.

As members of the UK Consultant Nurse Network, he and his team also offer advice to the Health Department and other NHS bodies to ensure treatment of people with learning disabilities remains at the highest standard.

The Royal College of Nursing award is for nursing workers who have developed initiatives to support the wellbeing and social inclusion of people with learning disabilities to maintain physical and mental health.