To mark Professional Care Workers Week (1-4 September 2020) and celebrate the excellent care workers we work within the East Midlands, our Patient Safety Collaborative Coordinator Nat talks about her background working in care and how this personally motivates her to want to support these individuals and the sector.
My background working in care
I began working as a care assistant after college. I had an accident which meant I couldn’t continue working as a chef and after helping to deliver a pastry class to adults with learning disabilities, I was inspired to apply for a job in care. I worked for a company that had several residential homes across Nottingham, specialising in supporting adults with learning disabilities and challenging behavior. I worked as a care assistant for six months before applying for a role as team leader and deputising for the home manager when needed. I worked in care for five years before joining the NHS.
The biggest challenge I found when working within the care sector was the relationship and culture between care home/nursing home sector and the wider healthcare sector. Being a carer can feel isolating and I would often feel unheard, specifically in situations that required me to attend hospital or appointments with my residents – I felt that my role wasn’t recognised in these scenarios. The role of a carer is often referred to as low skilled, when in fact it is far from it. As a carer you are required to be a voice for those who cannot speak up or make decisions for themselves, there is a lot of work that goes into being able to provide that support, and often it doesn’t receive the respect it deserves.
Care workers are simply, incredible individuals. Like most jobs, there are bad days, but the good days make it the best job in the world. Seeing someone at their most vulnerable and being able to provide the love and support they need is the best feeling. No two days are the same and carers continue to be passionate, resilient, and committed when faced with any situation including a worldwide pandemic!
Working for the NHS to support care workers
Following my work within care homes, I spent four years working within Bowel Cancer Screening, specifically working with care homes to increase uptake and ensure access to screening was available and fair.
When moving from Bowel Cancer Screening to the East Midlands Patient Safety Collaborative (EMPSC) at the Academic Health Science Network (AHSN), I was unaware of the extent of the work they did with care homes. It didn’t take long before I felt as if I had finally fallen on my feet, back working with a sector that not only meant a lot to me but also taught me so much.
Having worked within care homes, I can relate to their current struggles and frustrations as well as give realistic support to approaches to improvement projects within their homes – this feels so rewarding.
East Midlands Quality Improvement programme for care home professionals
The East Midlands PSC’s LPZ project works with care homes to introduce a tool that measures the prevalence of common care issues such as pressure ulcers, continence, nutrition, falls, restraint, and pain. Using this tool to collect data enables homes to make improvements to the care they deliver and monitor their progress. For example, a home may recognise as part of the audit that they need to improve nutrition in their home and we can work with them to provide advice so they can put measures in place to improve.
The project is just as important and beneficial for the care workers as it is for the residents. Taking part in the annual audit and being able to see their results year on year is empowering. The staff are able to see areas they need to focus on and with the support from our team are able to put the measures and plans into place.
Having worked on the project for over three years, there have been so many amazing success stories from homes who have taken part. One in particular will always stick with me. A home had taken in a resident from hospital, this resident had been very ill and was no longer able to live at home due to a variety of complex needs. The resident was very underweight and was not able to hold themselves up in a chair due to weakness. As the home was part of the LPZ project they had recently taken part in the nutrition and hydration training session at an event. Working together care staff and the home’s catering team were able to put a nutrition plan in place and gather a baseline to monitor the resident’s progress. Within six months the resident was at a healthy weight, was able to sit unassisted, and was unrecognisable from photos taken on admission.
Knowing that we supported the home not only with this resident but by empowering them to take this approach going forwards, due to the project and training, was extremely satisfying.
A more joined-up approach for the care sector
Having worked in the care sector and the NHS, in the future I would love to see a national approach to delivering quality improvement training to homes. I’d also welcome a much more joined-up approach to training, support, and communication across the health sector so it includes care homes.
However, if I could choose one change I would want care and nursing homes and the wider healthcare sector to build a stronger relationship. There is so much both sectors can learn from each other and I feel that would input into a much better overall quality of care and patient safety.
Author
Natalie Riley, Programme Coordinator