A FATHER-of-two from Bromsgrove has won an NHS70 Parliamentary Award for his work training healthcare professionals how to treat elderly patients with traumatic injuries.

Doctor David Raven, who lives in Stourbridge Road, launched the HECTOR project alongside his colleagues at Heartlands Hospital in Birmingham in 2011, after their research discovered the vast majority of trauma patients were elderly people who had fallen over.

Dr Raven told the Advertiser: "The way we train in medicine with trauma care is mostly about car crashes and younger people who get involved in fights.

"But when it comes to older people they often have simply fallen over or have an illness that causes them to fall - but they still get these really significant injuries.

"It became clear that the same training couldn't apply to them and that systems needed to adapt."

The HECTOR programme was created with the aim of treating the patient with the injury, rather than the injury on the patient by understanding the person's circumstances and medical history prior to treatment.

The model was adopted by Heartlands Hospital in 2012, and has since been turned into a nationwide training course and training manual.

Dr Raven said: "We've been inundated with requests from healthcare organisations across the country as people are recognising that the population is getting older and that we need to change the way we look after them.

"The feedback as been amazing. It's completely unexpected.

"Things aren't perfect anywhere in the NHS and it's been a real struggle - sometimes I've wanted to give up. But the support we've had from people around the country definitely spurs you on."

Bromsgrove Advertiser:

In May, the HECTOR team was named regional champion in the NHS70 Awards - launched to celebrate the National Health Service's 70th anniversary - after being nominated by Yardley MP Jess Phillips.

Dr Raven travelled to the House of Commons in London on Wednesday (July 4), where he took home the national award during a special ceremony, co-hosted by health secretary Jeremy Hunt.

He added: "We are incredibly proud to have won this award, especially when there are so many other strong contenders in the Emergency and Urgent Care category.

"HECTOR has always been about patient-centred care and changing our perspectives of what constitutes major trauma in an ageing population, so to be recognised nationally for this, is an amazing achievement for the whole team."