| | An innovative health care service for residents of nursing and residential homes in Sedgefield Borough is set to expand.
 The Emergency Care Practitioner (ECP) Care Home Service, which was set up by Sedgefield Primary Care Trust (PCT) in June 2006, has carried out over 500 consultations with residents of care homes during its first 12 months. By ECPs visiting patients in their care homes it has resulted in fewer calls for emergency ambulance services and GP visits, as well as reducing the number of admissions to hospital.
From 17 July, due to its success, the service will extend its opening hours to provide full day time cover from 9:30 am until 9:30 pm, seven days a week.
The service is run by ECPs - who are a new breed of health care professionals drawn from nursing and paramedic backgrounds. After undergoing further training ECPs are able to diagnose and treat independently a wide range of conditions.
The ECPs also work in the Urgent Care Centre (UCC) in Bishop Auckland carrying out a telephone assessment service. As a result of this, many callers are able to receive appropriate advice and assistance without having to make a journey to the centre. As well as these calls they answer Category ‘C’ nonemergency calls for the ambulance service and run clinics in a number of General Practices in the Sedgefield PCT area.
 Pamela Greaves, emergency care practitioner for Sedgefield PCT, said: “I am part of a team of three ECPs working across the area in care homes, general practices and the Urgent Care Centre. We are able to assess and treat patients for a wide variety of conditions, and work very closely with GPs, district nurses and other health professionals.”
Response to the ECP services has been extremely positive from health care professionals and residents of Sedgefield.
Dr Drew, GP from West Cornforth said: “The ECP has become a valued member of our practice team.”
Charles McCaughey, Director of primary care for Sedgefield PCT, said: “This innovative way of delivering health services to residents in our area demonstrates how development of our workforce and enhancing skills of trained professionals is vital if we are to modernise the NHS locally and deliver more patient focussed services.”
BOOKS ON WHEELS
Volunteers are desperately needed to help people unable to get to a library to keep up to speed with their reading. Books on Wheels, run by Durham County Council, is a home delivery service of books and information.
Every three weeks, volunteers pick up books from their local library and deliver them to the homes of older people or those with disabilities, and return the books they have read.
Now the service is looking to expand and needs volunteers throughout County Durham. We are looking for people to cover the County but at the moment we desperately need volunteers in the Consett area.
Also we are looking to expand the service, we are setting up pilot schemes in Pelton, Spennymoor and Stanley so we would particularly like volunteers from those areas. We would like to set up reading groups in residential homes too and need volunteers to help. We feel many people are probably unaware of the service who would benefit from it most. We do a very informal, non-intrusive interview to find out why someone is having difficulty getting to the library but the main aim is to find out their reading tastes.
Reading group visits to museum, galleries and other sites of interest are also held and volunteers are needed to help provide one to one support.
Anyone who would like to volunteer or to use the Books on Wheels home delivery service should contact Denise Tyerman on 0191 383 4224. |
