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A message to ours nurses from our Chief Nurse for International Nurses' Day

A message to ours nurses from our Chief Nurse for International Nurses' Day
12 May 2020

Happy international nurses day! Welcome to my new blog to all primary care and CCG nurses in Sheffield.

I’ve been thinking for a while that I wanted to highlight all the great work you are all doing and to say thank you to every one of you. What better day to do it than on international day of the nurse today.

Ever since the first coronavirus case was confirmed in the city, I have been impressed by how nurses have acted. You were quick to offer your support, I’ve seen nurses adapting and responding quickly and in the best interest of patients. You’ve been remarkable.

Practice nurses are focusing a lot of their clinical time with at risk patients. You’re adopting new technologies and telephone consultations to do this important preventative work. You’ve been spending longer with patients giving thorough, high quality, compassionate services despite the numerous constraints.

Many of you are worried this prevention focus may be diluted in the future. In the second phase of managing covid, the new normal will be focusing on people with long term conditions and practice nurses have been leading the way by already doing this. You should be proud. I will support you in looking at sustaining longer patient appointments and preventative work in the future. It fits with the CCG’s objective to reduce the impact of health inequalities on peoples’ health and wellbeing

A key piece of work that the PCDNs have been involved in is the staff swabbing service. With support from clinical directors and infection control colleagues, they created the service out of nothing - writing the SOP, creating a team of swabbers, and setting up a patient satisfaction survey. The service now runs seven days a week. The team has gone from initially swabbing just primary care staff to now include care home staff, community pharmacists, staff from any voluntary sector service commissioned by the CCG and family members of staff too. This is amazing.

CCG nurses are working differently too in new roles. They range from supporting primary care, helping the hospitals with discharging patients, quality assurance of care homes, and swabbing symptomatic key workers. I’ve enjoyed seeing my team in new roles, I am incredibly proud.

This reminds me of the story of First World War nurse Edith Cavell. Edith was a British nurse and is remembered for her work in Brussels with injured soldiers of all nationalities. She wasn’t partisan and treated and cared for people because they needed her help regardless of nationality. Her story resonates now as so many of you are working beyond organisational and professional boundaries are helping people where they need it most.

Since the outbreak of covid, I have listened and tried to respond to your needs. I heard you weren’t in the loop with CCG actions and on latest guidance and you had few opportunities to raise feedback and your concerns. I hope you find the PCDN meetings I set up with me useful. I want to assure you I do feed your concerns into command and control structures here at the CCG.  It’s great to see that you are now sharing with each other in chat forums as you need contact to check out each other’s understanding of some guidance for example and use the opportunity to bounce ideas off each other and share good practice. We are now looking at how we can virtually connect nurse networks too.

As the chief nurse, I am incredibly proud of the initiative shown by primary care and CCG nurses across and the city and your willingness to step into new areas of work and your can-do approach. However, one constant within the team has been the demonstration of your nursing values.

Enjoy international day of the nurse, you should be proud of yourselves, I am. Thanks again for working so hard to keep our patients safe.

NHS Sheffield Clinical Commissioning Group

Headquarters
722 Prince of Wales Road
Sheffield
S9 4EU

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