Associate Site: Hartlepool

Low Vision Services Pilot

The PCT believes that current initiatives such as a Locality Older Person’s Team and the Nurse Practitioner scheme for the elderly in nursing and residential homes support the development of low vision services. In addition it supports the shift of services from secondary to primary care. We particularly feel that the Nurse Practitioner Scheme will have an impact on the quality of patients’ lives and prevent secondary care admissions.

We currently have 801 elderly residents and three Nurse Practitioners to support their care. Discussions took place with RNIB who have offered to support the practitioners by providing a training package to aid identification of low vision and to ensure that the environment is to an optimum standard and that access to correct services is achieved.

Locality working in an integrated team is new to Hartlepool and will allow for both Community Matrons and District Nurses to work together to improve patient outcomes. Low Vision Services will be one aspect that these professionals will target as part of their workload.

Attention to low vision will become part of the integral care package. We have the opportunity to engage social care staff to develop an awareness of low vision and hopefully the scope to roll out a training package to all staff in the integrated teams.

Nurse Practitioners for the Elderly resident in nursing and residential homes will open up huge opportunities to influence prevention of isolation and accidents. We would hope to see resident staff take up the opportunity of the RNIB training package.

We liase with Action for the Blind, who currently support one OPD clinic per week at Hartlepool DGH. This will be an opportunity to work together to support patient choice and optimal lifestyles for a disadvantaged community. Improved quality of life, decreased level of risk, more information and informed choices, services talking to each other and planning care together for the benefit of the patient.

We hope to reduce secondary care admissions for such things as fractured NOF's and hips, also acute exacerbations of CDM. This could be a by-product of poor medicines management due to low vision that has not been diagnosed, treated or managed correctly.

We will have screened all our elderly residents in nursing and residential homes and ensured that a rolling training package is built into the job descriptions of all staff working in these institutions.

We will have locality teams addressing the needs of the elderly population which will include low vision assessment and appropriate care. Again training and profile raising will have to be an element of locality care. We will have shifted resource from the secondary care environment to primary care to allow for local accreditated practitioners to deliver increased care to an informed population.

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