Please do not forget that, whatever the outcome, you will still need to submit your application directly to the ACCEA. This also needs to be assessed before the submission date by your employer so you need to submit long enough before the deadline for your employer to add their citation to your submission. Each domain is assessed independently and scores allocated and summed. Each contribution can only be scored in one domain. So it is important to ensure that your achievements are distributed between the domains and not duplicated.

Important Considerations

There have been recent changes in the National Clinical Excellence Awards scheme that mean that those applying for awards need to carefully consider whether they are best applying to the national scheme or whether they would be better served pursuing local awards. Consultants who apply successfully for national Clinical Excellence awards lose any local awards (in England) or commitment awards (in Wales) that they previously held.

Individual’s national Clinical Excellence awards are reviewed every five years by ACCEA and either renewed or withdrawn as appropriate. The standard for renewals is that the consultant has to achieve at least the score of the lowest scoring application for a new reward at their level that is successful in their region. A significant number of consultants last year were not successful in their renewal applications.

How individual organisations respond to individuals who were previously in receipt of local awards, lose these when awarded a national award, only to lose their national award five years later, will be for that local organisation to decide but there have been cases of bronze award holders who have gone back to zero local CEA points on loss of their national award.

National Clinical Excellence awards are consolidated into consultants’ annual salaries for superannuation purposes but are not pay protected. Candidates therefore need to be aware that there is a risk that their long term salary and pension may be adversely affected if they are awarded a national award as a result of a contribution with national impact the equivalent of which they are unable to sustain to close to their retirement date. They also need to be aware that , dependent on the level of award they currently hold and hence the increase of their salary in one year, due to the way that the NHS pension scheme value is calculated this can take them significantly over their annual allowance and result in a tax bill running into five figures.