Family Nursing & Home Care (FNHC) District Nurses received a belated Christmas present this week with the delivery of a range of equipment purchased using Jersey Electricity’s annual donation of funds saved by not sending corporate Christmas cards.
Family Nursing & Home Care (FNHC) District Nurses received a belated Christmas present this week with the delivery of a range of equipment purchased using Jersey Electricity’s annual donation of funds saved by not sending corporate Christmas cards.
New pulse oximeters, digital thermometers, stethoscopes and blood pressure machines were among the items that will supplement packs used by FNHC’s 27 District Nurses and five-member crew of the charity’s new Crisis Re-ablement Team, including District Nurse Sister Catherine Joseph (pictured above).
The new team has grown from FNHC’s Rapid Response Team and has had great success in enabling patients, who would otherwise have to be dealt with in hospital, to be treated in their own homes. In March it was reported that the Rapid Response Team had delivered 688 days’ of care in patients’ homes in the first nine months of operations, preventing the admission of 167 patients to hospital.
FNHC’s Fund Raising Manager Ivo Le Maistre Smith said: ‘Properly equipped nurses bring great benefits to Jersey: first, people will only be admitted to hospital if they clinically need to be, and they will only stay as long as is clinically necessary. Second, people will be supported to live independently in their own homes which, in turn, means entry into long-term residential care will be prevented or delayed.
‘In the first three months since our Crisis Re-ablement Team was launched, it has treated a further 94 patients at home who would otherwise have had to have been admitted to, or remained in, hospital.’
JE CEO Chris Ambler said: ‘We have supported FNHC in this way for several years and are pleased to do so. The charity’s staff do tremendous work that is of huge benefit to our Island community.’