Two new Nurses have been appointed to speed up the assessment of community palliative care patients in Walsall – and the service is already reaping its rewards, with 400 referrals.

Lindsay Snowdon and Caroline Kelly, Palliative Care Triage Nurses, have been drafted in by Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust to support with patient flow at Walsall Palliative Care Centre.

Previously, referrals into the community palliative care Clinical Nurse Specialist (CNS) team were categorised as ‘urgent’, ‘routine’ and ‘soon’ (up to two weeks).

But with more patients experiencing more complex healthcare needs, a review was carried out and a business case was approved for the additional staff.

Since the new system was introduced in August, almost 400 patients with a life-limiting illness, physical or neurological, and with moderate to complex symptoms, have been picked up.

Katy Menear, Deputy Professional Lead for Palliative and End Of Life Care, said: “Having these two Nurses means that every referral that comes into palliative care is triaged (assessed) on the same day, if not the day after.

“Patients and the urgency in which they need to be seen has changed over the past few years.

“In some cases, we have found ‘soon’ to actually be ‘urgent’ so we recognised there was a need for an urgent triage referral.

“We’ve also seen an increase the urgent calls coming through. The CNS team has a named Duty Nurse each day whose role it is to act on these urgent calls and conduct home visits.

“However with more patients needing urgent home visits, the Duty Nurse was not available to check the urgent phone calls or referrals coming through.

“We recognised there was a gap there – our administrative staff were taking urgent phone calls but then having to wait for the Duty Nurse to return.

“So there was a period of time before those calls were being actioned.”

Since the new way of working started, results have been hugely positive.

“We’ve already found good results,” added Katy. “We have examples such as patients referred as ‘soon’ once triaged were found to need better pain management, we picked up a patient taking a double dose of medicine, and another who was imminently dying.

“That might not come through on the referral form, but because we’ve been able to make that initial clinical assessment on the phone we’ve ensured much better outcomes for patients.”

The Triage Nurses are office based, ensuring the Duty Nurse is able to conduct urgent visits. The appointment of two Triage Nurses means the service covers every working day and some weekends to support the increase in demand experienced.

Lindsay has worked at a local hospice for the past 13 years, initially in its inpatient unit then in the CNS team in its advice and referrals centre.

“I’m very excited to embark on my new role with a fantastic and compassionate team,” she said.

“Having had experience with a palliative care triage role in my previous job, I’m excited to have this opportunity to develop and shape, which will ultimately improve patient care.”

A Nurse for more than four decades, Caroline has spent 15 years in palliative care roles, including both adult and children’s hospices.