7 Peter and Gillian meet staff from the tobacco dependence team Staff from the sickle cell service Staff celebrate outside St Michael’s Spending time with the therapies team Andrea Pajak, children’s community matron, said: “I’m excited to being part of a bigger, wider organisation and my hope would be that the services, within our community services, continue to be supported appropriately.” Staff at inpatient and outpatient pharmacy chatted to Peter, Gillian and Emma. Hemant Shah, lead technician, said: “I’m looking forward to working together, implementing new ideas and sharing our experience.” Peter, Emma and Gillian also met with the digital and informatics teams. Prince Okdye, IT systems engineer, said: “I think there will be lots of benefits when we are all aligned on the same system.” Nikita Amado, senior nurse of the 40 virtual ward bed service for Enfield and Haringey discussed with Peter Landstrom about facilitating early discharge, taking a lot of patients from ED including those with cellulitis, chest infections and heart failure patients. She said: “We want to continue to get our numbers up and are planning on launching virtual ward pathways for sickle cell patients, as well as people with delirium. We are also working towards virtual ward pathways for respiratory patients and for surgical patients.” Dipu Sasidharan, community matron, working in the virtual ward team, said: “We think the merger will make things better for patients as having more access to their data will make transitioning them easier. I think we’ll see the benefits fairly quickly.” Sekayi Tangayi, consultant nurse for North Mid’s sickle cell service, said she was proud of the new emergency department bypass pathway for sickle cell patients. She said: “From recruitment to improving pathways we see a really bright future for the service, giving patients the care they deserve.” Peter, Gillian and Emma, also spent the afternoon at St Michael’s – the hub for North Mid’s community services, which includes a range of therapies for children and young people. St Michael’s is also home to the inpatient Magnolia unit, where our community tissue viability nurses offer specialist assessment and advice to patients with non-healing wounds. Frank Mahanzu, associate director of nursing for the community division, said he was looking forward to integrating North Mid’s community services with the RFL. He believes this will help alleviate pressure across our hospitals. He said: “If we have got robust discharge plans from the hospitals, we can see patients at home and perhaps prevent them from needing to come back via ED.” Helen Cooke, neurodiversity service lead, said: “I’m excited about the merger because it’s a chance for new conversations, learning from new teams, and finding out what others are doing to improve the services we provide. There is a little bit of trepidation from just not knowing everything at this stage.”
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