Adam Sangster
I am a Regional Nurse Manager for the Fresenius Kabi and Calea Nursing Service. I have been involved in HPN for nearly 3 years.
Understanding how important the relationship is, between each member of the team caring for a patient on HPN, took me a while. I was lucky enough to publish an article on this subject last year, this really helped my understanding and hopefully I can explain this to you now.
The process starts when a patient is expected to be discharged on HPN. This is when the members of the team in the NHS come together with the Homecare Company, such as Calea, to ensure a patient is safely discharged home with a therapy package in place.
It’s important that the communication between the hospital teams and the homecare teams is strong. The patient is at the heart of decision making process and we work in partnership to ensure that the correct decisions are made for each patient.
Any changes in regime are usually discussed between the patient and the hospital and then communicated to the homecare company so everyone knows what’s happening. This is really important because, in the beginning, this can often be a stressful time for HPN patients so ensuring the homecare nurses are seeing HPN patients twice a day, every day, depending how many nights they have their therapy. During this time the nurses build up a strong professional relationship and one of our patients has even gone as far to say the nurses “have become part of the family”.
Without the partnership working of homecare and NHS I doubt our patients would receive the same experience they do now. This is a relationship that should keep growing as our patient numbers continue to grow.
Read the full article here: http://dx.doi.org/10.12968/bjcn.2015.20.Sup6a.S24
