District Nurses
District nurses have been at the front line of health care in the community for many years. If you can’t leave your home due to poor health, problems getting around or a long-term condition, your district nurse is here to help.
District Nurses carry out many roles for housebound and older patients, including:
- General nursing procedures and investigations
- Post-surgery care
- Assessment of patients’ needs
- Care for terminally ill patients
- Loaning of equipment
- Looking after wounds and leg ulcers
- Educating patients about self-care
There are three district nursing teams in Haringey, aligned with the borough’s three primary care networks (PCNs). The East Haringey team is based at Lordship Lane, the West at Crouch End and the Central at Stuart Crescent.
In addition to these teams, there is also an ambulatory catheter clinic based at Lordship Lane which operates fortnightly, three leg ulcer clinics spread across both Haringey and Islington, a twilight team and a night service based at Whittington Hospital.
The district nursing service operates 24 hours a day. The overnight service is commissioned to provide end of life care and urgent catheterisation within a two hour time band for urgent visits.
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Eligibility Criteria
INCLUSIONS
• aged 16+
• housebound*
• eligible for publicly funded healthcare
• resident in the London borough of Haringey.
*An individual does not have to be bedbound to be considered confined to the home. However, the condition of the patient should be such that there exists a normal inability to leave the home and that, consequently, leaving the home would require considerable taxing effort. Long and/or frequent absences will indicate that the patient has the capacity to access healthcare outside the home.
Some ambulatory patients will receive home visits from the service. These include:
• patients whose nursing needs are best delivered in the home environment (e.g. spinal injury patients needing complex bowel management, immune-compromised patients).