Nurse Specialists

The Dorothy House Nurse Specialist is often the first point of contact with our hospice services. The Nurse Specialist  team is made up of 20 trained nurses with expertise in dealing with physical symptoms, offering emotional and psychological support and enabling patients and family/carers to talk through their fears and concerns. The Nurse Specialist all come from very experienced nursing backgrounds such as Cancer Care and District Nursing.

The nurses have an office base at Dorothy House, Winsley but work in the community and visit patients and their families/carers at home, in community hospitals or in nursing and residential homes. They do not carry out physical care but work closely with family GP’s, community nurses and other community services to ensure that the overall care received by you is of the highest standard.  Each nurse works with one or more specific GP practices and they are organised into “area teams” to ensure there is always cover across all of the Dorothy House catchment area.

Mendip Team

West Wiltshire Team

Bath & North East Somerset Team

North Wiltshire Team

What does a Dorothy House Nurse Specialist do?


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

• Refer patients to various services to ensure they are getting the best possible support and advice.

• Provide advice about managing symptoms such as nausea and vomiting, breathlessness or pain.  They work with patients and their doctors 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 caused by life-threatening illnesses.

They also work with our bereavement service to provide support in the early days following a bereavement

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