Shaping alcohol services to meet patients' needs

Abstract

This article examines the joint working of nurse practitioners with healthcare assistants (HCAs), and how this can shape services to be patient-centred and relevant to effective care. Nurses and healthcare staff are at the centre of patient care and often are best placed to set up clinics to address emerging patient need. This article examines the nursing and healthcare staff from the alcohol and drug liaison team of an inner London hospital, and how they responded to an emerging need from the patients they were treating. Often, patients who have had an alcohol detoxification in hospital are normally signposted to their local alcohol service. These signposted patients often do not engage with their local alcohol service and come back to hospital with more severe complications of alcohol use. This article shows how this team of HCAs and nurses have re-designed their outpatients clinic to enable these patients to be treated. This has been achieved with largely positive outcomes. The mix of the practitioners has been important to enable this model to work. In summary, nurse practitioners with HCAs can respond and shape services to be efficient for patients. With their shared skills, they can produce a patient-centred interface. This can also bring huge fiscal cost savings. This article is encouraging this approach to be more uniform in the NHS and encourage professionals to consider joint working.