Nurse Specialists

The Dorothy House Nurse Specialist is often the first point of contact with hospice services for most patients and can be the portal to the many other specialist services available.  The team is made up of 20 trained nurses with expertise in dealing with physical symptoms and offering emotional and psychological support and allowing patients and family/carers to talk through their fears and concerns.

The nurses visit patients and their families/carers at home, community hospitals or in nursing and residential homes. They do not carry out physical care but work closely with family doctors, community nurses and other community services to ensure that the care given is of the highest standard. Each nurse works with one or more specific GP practices, in an allocated area team:

Area teams

Area teams are organised for our benefit (but hopefully also for yours) and are named (loosely) after local authority boundaries.

- Bath team cover Bath and Keynsham.

- Mendip and B&NES team cover 14% of Somerset (Frome and Shepton Mallet)  and some of Bath and South East Somerset  (including Radstock, Midsomer Norton etc).

- North Wiltshire team. Cover Melksham, Corhsam, Box, Chippenham, Calne, Malmesbury.

- West Wiltshire team. Cover Devizes, Bradford on Avon, Trowbridge, Westbury and Warminster.

The area teams provide cover for each other during planned and un-planned absence and it is not uncommon for patients, carers or professionals to know more than one specialist nurse.

What does a Dorothy House Nurse Specialist do?

• Provide up to date information about services available, both in Dorothy House Hospice and in the community.

• Advise on symptom control e.g. nausea and vomiting, breathlessness or pain.  They work with patients and their local primary care team to ensure that these symptoms are kept to a minimum and patients can feel as well as possible.

• Offer support and opportunities for patients and their carers to talk about their fears and concerns, helping all those affected to adjust to the changes in life-style caused by life-threatening illnesses.

• Work with the DH bereavement service to provide support in bereavement.

• Actively engage with GPs and district nursing teams/other health and social care professionals within the area they work to ensure seamless care for patients and their carers.

• Actively refer on to these various services to ensure that patients and their families/carers are getting the best possible support and advice.

• Provide formal and informal education for health and social care colleagues.

Please note that our Nurse Specialists are not “Macmillan Nurses” as we receive no funding from Macmillan.  The job they do is, however, identical.