Community Nursing - South Glos

Out of Hours Nursing Service

The Sirona Care & Health Out of Hours Nursing Service provide nursing care from 5pm - 11pm (a team of nurses and Health Care Assistants cover the shift between 11.00pm – 8.00am).

End of life care - community support

Please see End of life care - community support

Community Matrons

Community Matrons are highly experienced senior nurses who work closely with the patient and their doctor to plan and organise their care.

As well as providing nursing care they also act as the patient’s ‘case manager’ – the single point of contact for care, support and advice. They make sure the patient understands how their medicines help their condition and may prescribe new medicines on behalf of other health professionals.

Each Community Matron is attached to a group of GP practices in their area.  Their aim is to prevent unnecessary and unplanned admissions to hospital and help to maintain independence, health and wellbeing.

Referral

Nursing support, care and treatment is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. 

Any new community nursing referrals that are deemed urgent (where a visit is required within 48 hours) must be made by phoning the SPA on 0300 125 6789.

If the visit is not urgent, a non-urgent referral form  must be filled in and emailed to: Sirch.southglosSPA@nhs.net

Referrals are accepted either from patients or their GP.

District Nursing

This service is for adults who are registered with a GP in the South Gloucestershire area.

The service provides a 24 hour nursing service for adults who are housebound. This can include;

• Comprehensive individual assessment of needs
• Out-of-hours clinical nursing care, support and advice
• Skin care, including pressure ulcer care, post operative/wound and leg ulcer care
• Continence assessment and provision of aids
• Catheter care and bowel management
• Palliative care, including holistic management and symptom control for people with cancer and other life limiting conditions
• Advice, guidance and support regarding medications
• Provision of equipment, including advice and assessment to maintain independence

Monitoring and screening of chronic diseases, including Diabetes, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease and Cardiovascular Disease.

Referral

Patients can either self-refer or can be referred by a GP or other health care professional.

Patients will receive an initial assessment by a nurse who will work with you to identify your health needs.

Any new community nursing referrals that are deemed urgent (where a visit is required within 48 hours) must be made by phoning the SPA on 0300 125 6789.

If the visit is not urgent, a non-urgent referral form  must be filled in and emailed to: Sirch.southglosSPA@nhs.net

Blood requests

Sirona has introduced a new approach to managing domiciliary blood requests, which will go live in South Gloucestershire on 18 March 2023.

Blood requests will be colour coded:

• Red:Required within 48 hours to avoid a hospital admission, to ensure safety, or to implement a change of treatment. Please note these can only be phoned through to SPA on 0300 125 789. You cannot complete a form or make a referral through EMIS to request them.
• Amber:Bloods required between 48 hours and seven days.
• Green:Bloods required between eight days to six weeks.

The requester is responsible for following up and completing any actions.

The new Sirona Community Services Domiciliary Bloods Referral Form is live on EMIS for the request of Amber or Green bloods.

EMIS electronic prescribing charts

Community prescribing medication charts can now be completed electronically in EMIS (BNSSG Community Drug Chart), without the need for a wet signature. There is now a single version for BNSSG.  For a PDF version of the chart, see BNSSG Joint Formulary

Community Insulin prescribing charts can also be completed electronically in EMIS (BNSSG Insulin Community Drug Chart), without the need for a wet signature. There is now a single version for BNSSG. For a PDF version of the chart, see BNSSG Joint Formulary

Prescribing of end of life medication should not be done on these charts - these charts are available separately here.

The process we have agreed for the electronic drug chart use is:

For new referrals:

1. GP or other primary care healthcare professional identifies patient will need an intervention requiring a PSD and completes consultation accordingly documenting fully on EMIS.
2. GP completes community prescribing form on EMIS.
3. For urgent requests within 48hrs, the GP/HCP completes a referral to the Sirona SPA by phoning 0300 125 6789 and will advise the Health Navigator that the chart has already been uploaded to EMIS.
4. For routine requests over 48hrs, the GP/HCP completes a referral to the Sirona SPA by email or EMIS managed referral using the single referral form and stating that the chart has already been updated to EMIS. The email address for referrals is: 
   • Bristol – sirch.bristolspa@nhs.net
   • South Glos – sirch.southglosspa@nhs.net
   • North Somerset – sirch.northsomersetspa@nhs.uk
5. SPA will process the referral and may call the surgery back for further information if required- please ensure that all forms are fully completed
6. Sirona staff in the community will print the chart(s) and use according to agreed process

For updated charts: (requested by INT colleagues when things change or charts are due to expire and need updating)

For urgent requests, community staff may telephone the surgery, or otherwise will email the surgery receptions generic email address.

When contacting the surgery, they will need to provide:

• Individual details – patient name, DOB/NHS number, medication requested and why
• Any further useful information
• By when does this need to be prescribed (deadline)?
• Contact details to confirm this has been done – return phone number and/or email address.

The surgery will then arrange for the chart to be completed by a prescriber and uploaded to EMIS and will email or phone the community team using the details provided to confirm that this has been done and the chart is available to print and use.

For secondary care and other providers not on EMIS the charts should be sent to sirona.psd@nhs.net with all the relevant information attached.

Wound Care

Please see Tissue Viability / Wound Care Service

Efforts are made to ensure the accuracy and agreement of these guidelines, including any content uploaded, referred to or linked to from the system. However, BNSSG ICB cannot guarantee this. This guidance does not override the individual responsibility of healthcare professionals to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual patient, in consultation with the patient and/or guardian or carer, in accordance with the mental capacity act, and informed by the summary of product characteristics of any drugs they are considering. Practitioners are required to perform their duties in accordance with the law and their regulators and nothing in this guidance should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with compliance with those duties.

Information provided through Remedy is continually updated so please be aware any printed copies may quickly become out of date.