SESLHD CORE Awards
The SESLHD CORE Awards celebrate excellence, innovation, and commitment to the delivery of healthcare within our community.
Each year, we recognise and honour individuals and teams making significant contributions to improving patient care, health outcomes and service delivery, whilst upholding and modelling our CORE values – Collaboration, Openness, Respect and Empowerment.
Our awards highlight achievements across a diverse range of categories, such as clinical excellence, patient advocacy, technological innovation, community outreach and outstanding leadership. By shining a spotlight on the exceptional achievements within SESLHD, we aim to inspire continuous improvement and foster a culture of excellence within the SESLHD community.
See 2025 CORE Award Finalists here
Award Categories
Team Awards
A detailed description of each Team Award category can be found here.
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CATEGORY |
CRITERIA |
| Excellence in Aboriginal Healthcare | This award recognises exceptional healthcare delivery through partnerships across NSW Health and external agencies. Submissions must demonstrate a strong partnership with Aboriginal people and their communities in the evidence-building, design, implementation and evaluation of the project or initiative. |
| Excellence in Diversity and Inclusion | We deliver greater benefits for the people of NSW when our workforce is as diverse as the people we serve. We want all staff to feel safe, valued, respected and engaged every day. This award acknowledges projects, programs or initiatives that strive to create workplaces where everyone’s diverse talents, experiences and skills can drive innovation and collaboration to deliver the best possible outcomes for our patients and communities. |
| Excellence in Environmental Sustainability | This award recognises work that has demonstrated outstanding achievements in promoting and implementing environmentally sustainable practices within SESLHD. Projects or initiatives should display evidence of a reduction in the consumption of resources, reduced environmental impact in the way that services are provided, and strong leadership to embed environmentally sustainable improvements. |
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Excellence in Health Innovation |
This award recognises demonstrated excellence in health innovation by a team to secure better outcomes for our patients and the communities we serve. This may include harnessing the power of digital innovation, new models of care and/or data to make health services more accessible, affordable, equitable, efficient and effective. |
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Excellence in Health Research |
This category recognises basic science research, clinical medicine and science research, health services research, and public health research as defined by the National Health and Medical Research Council. Quality assurance projects and systematic reviews without an associated empirical data gathering component are not eligible for this category. |
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Excellence in Multicultural Healthcare |
This award recognises exceptional healthcare delivery for people from multicultural backgrounds, through strong partnerships and collaboration across the health system, multicultural communities and external agencies. Teams must have an ongoing commitment to the delivery of safe, high-quality, culturally responsive and accessible health services. |
| Excellence in Preventative Healthcare | This award recognises innovative preventative healthcare projects or programs that support our community to improve their health and reduce health inequalities, and ultimately prevent ill health. |
| Excellence in the Provision of Mental Health Services |
Reducing the growing incidence of Mental Health conditions and illnesses amongst Australians is a priority area for SESLHD and the NSW Government. This award recognises and showcases innovations that improve the quality and safety of mental health patient care. |
| Patient Safety First | Providing world-class clinical care where patient safety comes first, is a key priority for NSW Health and SESLHD. This award acknowledges projects that demonstrate leadership in putting patient safety first, every day. |
| People and Culture | This award recognises teams that develop and support our people and culture, and ensure a safe and healthy environment for patients and staff. |
| Team of the Year |
This award honours an exceptional team, which consistently demonstrates dedication to delivering and/or supporting our healthcare services, displays a commitment to continuous improvement and a positive organisational culture, and consistently models our CORE values. Finalists for this category can only be selected from teams that have already won a local Team of the Month award. |
| Transforming Patient Experience | This award recognises that patients are partners in their health care. The award acknowledges projects and programs with meaningful and active collaboration between the patient/consumer, families, carers and healthcare team to improve health outcomes. |
Individual Awards
A detailed description of each Individual Award category can be found here.
|
CATEGORY |
CRITERIA |
| CORE Values in Action | This award recognises an individual who has demonstrated an exceptional commitment to upholding and promoting the CORE values, with evidence to show their positive impact on their colleagues, patients, and/or the wider community. |
| Outstanding Service to the Organisation | This award recognises an individual who consistently demonstrates a strong work ethic, exceptional commitment to service, and dedication to their role within SESLHD. Nominees within this category can be a clinical or non-clinical staff member with at least ten years of service to NSW Health. |
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Rising Star |
This award recognises an individual within SESLHD who has demonstrated exceptional leadership potential and is a strong role model for all. Nominees within this category can be a clinical or non-clinical staff member, but must be under the age of 35. |
| Staff Member of the Year |
This award recognises a SESLHD employee who has made an outstanding contribution to the health system through effective collaboration and providing excellence in service. Finalists for this category can only be selected from employees that have already won a local Employee of the Month award. |
| Volunteer of the Year | This award recognises that volunteers are valuable members of the workforce, and essential to the delivery of public health services. It recognises their generous efforts, which directly enable better outcomes for patients, families, carers and staff. |
Key Dates
| 2025 CORE Awards Submissions Open | Wednesday 5 March 2025 |
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2025 CORE Awards Submissions Close Submissions must be submitted via the online form by 11:59pm on 2 April. No exceptions will be made for nominations submitted after this time. |
11:59pm Wednesday 2 April 2025 |
| 2025 CORE Awards Ceremony | Monday 2 June 2025 |
Submitting an Application
All nominations for the 2025 CORE Awards must be submitted through this online nomination form. It can be completed on your work or personal device, and you do not need to be connected to the hospital network to obtain access.
Your completed submission will automatically be forwarded to the relevant Facility or Directorate under which your nomination has been submitted.
You will be required to complete five questions to submit a team award, or two questions to submit an individual award. Please note that your responses must not exceed the word counts provided, and excess words will be excluded from your submission.
It may be helpful for you to first complete your responses in a word document, and then copy and paste the responses to transfer them into the online form.
When completing the questions in the online nomination form, please take into account both the Award-specific category descriptions and the general Team and/or Individual Award judging criteria. This information has been summarised here:
For further information and support with completing your application, please contact your Local Liaison Officers.
Selection Process
Once the submission period ends, each Facility and Directorate may select one finalist from the nominations received via the online form for each of the CORE Awards categories.
The finalists from each Facility and Directorate will be reviewed by the District Executive Team to determine a winner, the decisions of which are final. The winners from each category will be announced at the 2025 SESLHD CORE Awards ceremony on 2 June 2025.
Where relevant and appropriate, some of the winners from our 2025 CORE Awards may also be submitted as our finalists for the NSW Health Awards and/or Premier’s Awards.
Contact Info
Local Liaison Officers
| SITE | LLO | |
| Prince of Wales Hospital | Rhiannon Young | rhiannon.young@health.nsw.gov.au |
| Sydney / Sydney Eye Hospital | Rhiannon Young | rhiannon.young@health.nsw.gov.au |
| Royal Hospital Women | Victoria Walton | victoria.walton@health.nsw.gov.au |
| War Memorial Hospital | Louise Walker | louise.walker4@health.nsw.gov.au |
| St George Hospital | Paulina Pazdzior | paulina.pazdzior@health.nsw.gov.au |
| Sutherland Hospital | Kath Helling | kath.helling@health.nsw.gov.au |
| Garrawarra Centre | Kiran Pandit | kiran.pandit@health.nsw.gov.au |
| Aboriginal Health | Ashleigh Gray | ashleigh.gray@health.nsw.gov.au |
| Calvary Hospital | Helene Delinicolis | helene.delinicolis@health.nsw.gov.au |
| Calvary Hospital | Petula Storey | petula.storey@health.nsw.gov.au |
| Corporate Services | Catherine Cunningham | catherine.cunningham@health.nsw.gov.au |
| Digital Health | Igor Bosevski | Igor.bosevski@health.nsw.gov.au |
| District Finance | Alison Dufour | alison.dufour@health.nsw.gov.au |
| Mental Health Services | Jaden Dowd | jaden.dowd@health.nsw.gov.au |
| Nursing and Midwifery | Katrina Eisenhauer | katrina.eisenhauer@health.nsw.gov.au |
| Operations | Samantha Pratt | samantha.pratt1@health.nsw.gov.au |
| Organ Tissue and Donor Services | Joanna Stathopoulos | joanna.stathopoulos@health.nsw.gov.au |
| People and Culture | Catherine Sikora | catherine.sikora@health.nsw.gov.au |
| Population and Community Health | Jessica Liew | jessica.liew@health.nsw.gov.au |
| Strategy, Improvement & Innovation | Sarah Benjamin | sarah.benjamin@health.nsw.gov.au |
General Enquiries
Please email SESLHD-Recognition@health.nsw.gov.au
2025 SESLHD CORE Awards are proudly supported by
