Over the years I've worked at a couple of places where they've held awards ceremonies - earlier this year the BMJ Group held its inaugural ones, and a good time was had by all. We're doing it again in 2010, so it's a good opportunity to nominate either yourself or someone else who has made a significant impact on health care.

Anyway, 11 categories reward excellence in health care, including Getting Research into Practice (GRiP), Clinical Leadership and Primary Care Team of the Year. Visit the website to enter before the closing date of 15 November.

Incidentally, Val Curtis, director of the hygiene centre at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Health, won the Health Communicator award in 2009 for her work on handwashing. She is currently in the news for the Golden Poo awards, held to mark Global Handwashing Day. Every year 3.5m children in the developing world die from diarrhoeal diseases and pneumonia. An estimated 1m lives could be saved if handwashing with soap was universal.

Anyway, Val and her colleagues tested the impact of different messages on handwashing with soap that were flashed on to screens at the entrance to toilets at UK service stations. Men tended to react best to messages that invoked disgust, such as "Soap it off or eat it later." Ugh!