[A] senior nurse at North Cumbria University Hospitals NHS Trust is one of the first 50 in the United Kingdom to have completed and passed a prestigious Older Person Nurse Fellowship at King’s College London.
Louise Fitzpatrick, ward manager of the frailty unit at the Cumberland Infirmary in Carlisle passed the course in January. The Fellowship programme is aimed at leading innovation and quality improvement in care for older people. The Fellowship delivers confident, competent and compassionate leaders to act as agents of change to transform person-centred services.
Louise said: “I plan on continuing to gain knowledge and lead in the improvement of care of older people within the Trust. Our frailty unit, which opened in August 2016, focuses on ensuring patients are looked after in the right place at the right time. We aim to make the older persons’ pathway through the hospital is as smooth as it can be, by assessing and taking patients direct from A&E and ensuring they have a timely comprehensive geriatric assessment. We then ensure they are discharged from the ward to an appropriate place of care, preferably the person’s own home, but also utilising the other elderly care ward for patients who require a longer length of stay.”
The frailty unit received a special mention in the Care Quality Commission’s (CQC) recent report on the Trust as being ‘innovative and progressive’ in its care of elderly patients.
