The team, which includes Dr Rebecca Payne, a Clinical Senior Lecturer at Bangor University, was awarded the prestigious prize by the Centre for the Advancement of Interprofessional Education (CAIPE) and the Royal Society of Medicine.
It was awarded for their paper, Making Remote General Practice Safer: a co-produced, whole-team interprofessional training resource and intervention.
Their work highlights how academic researchers, practising clinicians, national patient-safety investigators and indemnity expertise can be brought together to turn research on real patient-safety incidents into something that practice teams can actually use.
This multi-institutional, multidisciplinary and interprofessional achievement brought together researchers and clinicians from Bangor University and the University of Oxford, alongside colleagues from NHS Resolution and the Health Services Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB). It includes expertise in general practice, primary care research, medical anthropology and organisational development, clinical indemnity and national patient-safety investigation.
The work developed a whole-team training intervention to improve the safety and equity of remote general practice. Rather than focusing only on clinicians, it brings together GPs, nurses, pharmacists, practice managers, receptionists and administrative staff to examine how safety-critical decisions are actually made across the whole practice.
The training was piloted with six NHS general practices across England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The work has also been published in BMJ Quality & Safety, with an accompanying editorial highlighting its wider implications for interprofessional learning, quality improvement and patient safety.
Dr Rebecca Payne, a Clinical Senior Lecturer at Bangor University, said, “So much of the work that keeps patients safe in general practice happens outside the consulting room, and is carried out by receptionists and other team members whose contribution can too easily go unseen. Our team has worked to recognise and address this through the training we developed, supporting the expertise, judgement and teamwork involved in delivering safe care. It is wonderful now to see the importance of that work recognised through this award as well, and to see greater visibility given to the people across primary care who quietly make a difference to patients every day.”
The award-winning team is:
- Dr Joseph Clift – University of Oxford
- Dr Francesca Helen Dakin – University of Oxford
- Professor Anwar Khan – NHS Resolution
- Dr Nicholas Woodier – HSSIB
- Professor Trisha Greenhalgh – University of Oxford
- Dr Rebecca Payne – Bangor University /Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board
The award-winning paper is: Clift J, Dakin FH, Khan A, Woodier N, Greenhalgh T, Payne R. Development and pilot evaluation of the implementation of a whole-team training pack to improve the effectiveness, efficiency, safety and equity of remote general practice. BMJ Quality & Safety. 2026. doi: 10.1136/bmjqs-2026-020139.