Last week we caught up with Ward Manager, Julia Barraclough, to find out how the nurse led team on HRI, Ward 15 help our most complex patients, going beyond just looking at being medically fit for discharge to a whole person approach to compassionate care.

Tell us about Ward 15?

“We are the place that untangles all the people’s social history, comorbidities, and hospital admission in one place. So, it is very complex in that we are not just looking at one part of a person.

“You come into hospital and you’re very poorly and you fix the physical health. But that person might have a lot of other things happen to them – they might be deconditioned, frail – and that doesn’t change just because they have got to go home. So we look after the most complex patients who come to us and our priority is to get them back to that baseline or see if they need long term care.

“We are very passionate on Ward 15 about independence and trying to rehabilitate patients. It is about understanding it from their perspective and how hard that person may have worked to get their home and family life – you never come into hospital thinking that you might not return to the place you call home.

“There is a whole life behind this person, not just a bed number in a bed.”

Where do your patients come to you from?

“We get people transferred from CRH and HRI once they are medically optimised for discharge, but that doesn’t always mean a patient is ready to go home. Dealing with complex discharges, people don’t realise that we look at the whole picture – so we not only deal with rehabilitation, safeguarding, financial implications, social and complex family histories – we have poorly patients too and we want to prevent them from being readmitted."

What makes the team on Ward 15 special?

“I have only been at CHFT about nine months but as soon as I came I had such a warm welcome. Everyone works together, they care so unbelievably much about the patients and get to know their families, they advocate for people and treat everyone as if they were their own friend or family member.

“We look after each other as we know the job is hard, it can be emotionally a lot – we have got a wellbeing box, a rescue box in the staff room that we all top up. And these are all things that colleagues on our ward have driven themselves.

“Every single person on this ward wants to improve too which is so fantastic to see as a manager. I know I can go to the team with a problem, take our wristband scanning compliance for example – we introduced a bit of friendly competition, which has taken compliance from 50% to over 80% in six weeks – which is fantastic.”

What would you want people to take away from reading this today?

“Discharge should start from admission. As soon as someone comes into hospital we should be looking at their home situation and what has led that person to be with us today, changing the focus on to the person not just the illness.

“I think we need to go beyond the term ‘medically fit for discharge’ which gets people thinking that a patient can be independent but there is more to it than just the illness, and that is how we play such a vital role in unpicking all the pieces of the puzzle.”