Celebrating success in patient experience

Q: What is PEN?

A: The Picker Experience Network Awards are the first and only awards programme to recognise best practice in patient experience across all facets of health and social care in the UK and from across the world.

The Picker Experience Network Awards are delivered by the Picker Experience Network (PEN). PEN’s vision is to create a unique platform and resource hub of best practice methods and models across the healthcare industry. Our goal is to lead a unique patient experience awards programme, which has a positive impact for all involved.

PEN is a ‘not-for profit’ which seeks to independently assist, advise, and provide expertise to those working towards positive patient experience.

The awards are completely independent and are not sponsored by, or affiliated with, large media partners. This gives us the unique advantage of being a free-thinking, independent body that can position itself separately from other healthcare awards, with highly valued judges who are experts in their field.

Organisations can nominate themselves, or be nominated, in one of more categories, and then will be entered into the judging process.

Q: What are the categories?

A: We feel our categories reflect the wide ranging work across this sector. From large organisation-wide strategic initiatives to local more operational activities, from commissioning to providing the experience, from public engagement programmes to specific targeted actions there will be a category for your work.

Please note you can enter a project or initiative that has been submitted in a previous year, as long as it has progressed and subsequently you have new results to show. We love to hear how a story has developed and it can be really inspiring documenting a journey from humble beginnings to its successful completion, or ongoing.

We have a panel of 60+ Judges every year, each bringing their unique perspective and health sector background to the process. All entries will be judged on their merit, irrelevant of the size of the project or initiative. There are standard judging criteria against which all entries will be scored.

Each year the categories are revised and refreshed to ensure they are still relevant.

2026 has seen the biggest update we have made to categories for a while so please do click here to see the new category listing.

Q: What are the Judging Criteria?

The quality of management and project leadership: this includes the clarity of the initiative’s objectives; how well they were communicated; how effectively the project was introduced and implemented; its planning and execution? How have they involved stakeholders, what learning have they experienced through the project, how have they talked problems? Leadership is also about resilience

Outcomes and Sustainability

Measuring Success: How has performance been measured and benchmarked, how successful was the project? How did it achieve its aims – or exceed them?

Impact on Patient Experience: How has patient (and/or staff) experience and service delivery improved or changed as a result of the initiative? What happened both intended and unintended?

Sustainability: How will the initiative make a sustainable, ongoing difference? How does it have longevity? What is the plan to sustain the work?

Involvement and Inclusion

Involvement: Who was involved ? How have patients/ carers/ family member/ colleagues/staff been involved (for example co-creation, co-production, steering groups, advisory groups etc)? At what stage were they involved – early, ongoing?

Inclusion: How inclusive has it been, for example has accessibility, ethnicity, proactively involving seldom heard voices etc. been considered? What has been done to address health inequalities and what have they learnt through this process?

Transferability and Dissemination

Transferability: How easily could the initiative be replicated in other parts of the organisation or transferred to other organisations, teams, specialities?

Sharing Good Practice: How effectively has the learning from the project been spread within the organisation and/ or throughout the healthcare sector as a whole?

If you are unsure of whether your initiative will meet the above criteria please feel free to have a chat with a member of our team. We will be happy to advise and assist you, or give you an idea of the most suitable category for your work. We are here to help all potential entrants; there is no question too big or too small.

If you do have any questions or would like to discuss how to enter please contact the team on 03333 44 7060 or [email protected]

Scoring Guidelines

Please note that all criteria have an equal weighting and are each scored out of 100. To achieve an optimum score for your entry please bear in mind the guidelines below which will be used by the judges.

Rating	Description of how well entry meets criteria	Marks available
Outstanding	Compelling, robust, fully evidenced description	80-100
Strong	Some compelling evidence, very good	60-79
Adequate	Good above average, lots of evidence but not compelling	40-59
Limited	Some weak areas, would have benefited from more evidence	20-39
Weak	Unconvincing, weakly evidenced description	0-19

Q: How do I enter?

A: Once you have decided that you would like to enter, and you have selected your chosen categories, as soon as our applications open, you can head to our PEN Portal to start your submission.

We are delighted to announce our key dates for the 2026 Picker Experience Network Awards Programme:

Weds 18^th March – Submissions open
Sun 26^th July – Submissions close
Weds 19^th August – Shortlisted finalists announced
Thursday 1^st Oct – Live event in Birmingham

To find out more about entering please contact the team on 03333 44 7060 or [email protected]

Q: What are the charges for taking part?

A: Our approach to pricing

Entry prices for the Awards have remained unchanged since before 2019. Throughout this period, we have been deliberate in ensuring the Awards remain accessible to a wide range of organisations, individuals and NHS Trusts, reflecting the importance of recognising excellence across the whole system.

In response to rising operational costs, including venue, staffing and production, we have made a modest adjustment to pricing for 2026. This enables us to continue delivering a high-quality, credible and impactful Awards experience that reflects the significance of the work being recognised.

At the heart of the Awards remains a clear purpose, to celebrate, share and scale what works in person centred care, and to bring together a community committed to improving experiences for patients, families and staff.

We remain committed to ensuring the Awards continue to recognise and amplify the very best in experience-led care, while remaining inclusive, credible and grounded in real impact.

Awards Pricing 2026

First Award Entry
£249 + VAT (includes 1 x live event place)

Additional Award Entry
£199 + VAT (includes 1 x live event place)

Additional Event Place (for entrants)
£249 + VAT

Event Place (for non-entrants)
£299 + VAT

Entries are free for volunteers and students.

Loyalty Pricing for 2025 Entrants

We recognise the ongoing commitment of organisations who return year on year to share their work and contribute to the wider learning community.

For organisations that submitted an entry in 2025, we are maintaining 2025 pricing as a loyalty offer.

First Award Entry
£199 + VAT (includes 1 x live event place)

Additional Award Entry
£169 + VAT (includes 1 x live event place)

Additional Event Place (for entrants)
£199 + VAT

Entries are free for volunteers and students.

Q: How do I make payment?

A: As soon as your submission/s are complete and submitted via our Portal, we will pass your details on to our Finance Team who will then issue an invoice via email in due course.

On receipt of this invoice, you can raise a relevant PO No if required and send it back to our Finance Team for reissue. If you do need a PO No on your invoice, you can either submit this invoice into your payment system as normal or pay using Card via the Stripe Payment link provided.

Q: How can students take part?

A: We have one category available to Students that is free to enter.

Developing the Capability for Person-Centered Care – Student Led

This category recognises programmes building skills and capability for person-centred care for the future (including students and future workforce)

Excellence in this category look like evidence that learning or development initiatives have strengthened capability or culture to improve the experience.

Examples of projects include training programmes, improvement education and student-led initiatives.

The category is open to all students (at any stage) on any health, medical, social care or related programme of study.

Why should I enter?

Find out here

Celebrating success in patient experience

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Be part of the first and only awards programme to recognise best practice in patient experience across health and social care.

Watch the highlights from last year’s PEN Awards

Award categories for the 2026 Awards

Head to the PEN Awards portal to start your entry

FAQs and more information