The PREPARE for surgery team won Surgical Team of the Year and the new Patient Partnership award at this year's annual BMJ awards last week.

PREPARE for surgery is a structured prehabilitation programme developed by the oesophagael (OG) team at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust in collaboration with NIHR Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care and the OG patient group. It has been implemented and evaluated using quality improvement methodology and principles of co-design.

PREPARE aims to improve people’s functional, nutritional and psychological well-being in order to better withstand the stress of surgery and facilitate recovery thereafter. 

Over the past 2 years 65 patients have been enrolled in PREPARE. Results have demonstrated no deterioration in physical functional over the course of chemotherapy and a significant improvement prior to surgery. There has been a parallel increase in self-confidence in patients throughout the pre-operative period. The programme has led to improvements in post-operative complications with a fall in post-operative pneumonia from 60% to 30% and a reduction in median hospital stay from 12 days to 9 days.