Two Brighton and Hove nominees from the medical world have seen off more than 700 rivals to be shortlisted for the BMJ Group Awards.
The first is Professor Lesley Fallowfield, the director of Cancer Research UK’s Psychosocial Oncology Group at Brighton and Sussex Medical School at the University of Sussex.
Professor Fallowfield has been shortlisted for the Lifetime Achievement Award.
The BMJ (British Medical Journal) said: “The leading cancer psychologist Lesley Fallowfield has made an outstanding and lasting contribution to improving the quality of care received by patients with cancer.
“She is one of a few international figures who have established psycho-oncology as an important subspecialty
“Professor Fallowfield originally trained as a nurse at Guy’s Hospital, London, before gaining a BSc and a doctorate in experimental psychology from Sussex.
“She joined the Clinical Trials Unit at King’s College London, where she pioneered quality of life assessment in breast cancer trials, and she quickly established herself as one of the world’s leading exponents of psycho-oncology research, developing and validating numerous instruments to measure quality of life in cancer trials.
“Professor Fallowfield recognised the communication difficulties faced by oncologists when giving complex information, delivering bad news or recruiting patients to clinical therapy trials.
“She therefore designed and then evaluated educational interventions to improve health professionals’ communication with patients.”
Her research has resulted in more than 300 published papers, and she is a much sought after national and international lecturer.
BMJ readers – mostly doctors – have until Friday 12 February to vote for Professor Fallowfield or one of the nine others to have been nominated for the Lifetime Achievement Award.
Charter Medical Centre in Hove has been shortlisted for one of the ten other categories – Primary Care Team of the Year – which will be decided by a panel of expert judges.
The practice, in Davigdor Road, is up against three other primary care teams in this category which is intended to recognise practices that demonstrate improved outcomes in disease management.
The winners will be announced at a ceremony at the London Hilton in Park Lane on Wednesday 10 March.
