Specialist Nursing & Long Term Conditions
Important information:
From 1 April 2011 Community Health Oxfordshire (CHO) integrates with Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust. Information regarding Specialist Nursing and Long Term Conditions has now moved across to Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust’s website and can be found here.
This page will be removed from NHS Oxfordshire’s website on 3 May 2011. Therefore please ensure that any bookmarks you have made to this page are updated. |
The Oxfordshire Community Heart Failure Service
The Community Heart Failure Service is a PCT service developed with four specialist nurses to care for the needs of people in Oxfordshire who have chronic heart failure. The service is also supported by the British Heart Foundation.
Heart failure is a chronic condition which affects more and more people and can have a huge impact on the quality of life, psychologically as well as physically. The service is a valuable resource in primary care, providing a consistent and systematic approach to the treatment of heart failure sufferers. The nurses achieve this by working closely with the patients' GPs as well as with hospital consultants to monitor the symptoms of heart failure and manage medication.
The nurses also place great emphasis on the education and support of patients and their carers or families.
Your GP can refer you to this service.
Respiratory Care Team
The Respiratory Care Team offers a range of support services to enable patients to be cared for at home where possible, rather than be admitted to hospital. The team helps more than 30 patients every month cope with chronic respiratory conditions such as asthma, emphysema and chronic bronchitis.
The team works alongside primary health care teams, including occupational and physiotherapists, social and care workers, and GPs who refer their patients to the service. Once they have been assessed, patients are able to contact the team directly when they need support or become unwell.
Patients are offered 'coping' strategies such as how diet and exercise can help with their illness. Patients' families too are offered support - acute episodes of respiratory illness can often be frightening for relatives and the nurses are at the end of the phone and are able to respond quickly to help families and carers deal with any episodes.
The team is also able to care for patients at home when they come out of hospital, working closely with GPs, district nurses and other members of the primary care teams. Having this package of care in place means that many patients can be discharged earlier.
The service runs from Monday to Friday from 8am to 6pm and from 9am to 5pm on Saturdays. Your GP can refer you to this service.
Diabetes Care
Our programme to provide services for people with diabetes in Oxfordshire is as follows:
A screening programme using new digital photography techniques to detect retinopathy in diabetes sufferers. Oxfordshire diabetes patients can have their eyes tested at one of sixteen opticians (optometry practices) across the county or at a new mobile screening unit at their GP surgery.
Using specialist digital cameras, optometrists or trained screeners photograph the eye and send the images electronically along with information about the patient's condition directly to clinicians on a secure site at the John Radcliffe Hospital. The use of broadband technology enables faster test analysis. Using broadband technology the images are usually available to the clinicians for grading within 24 - 48 hours and reports will be sent out to the patients and their GPs.
Retinopathy is a disease of the retina caused by diabetes, which can result in blindness. If detected at an early stage, the condition can be treated to prevent sight threatening disease. Patients who are registered with their GPs as having diabetes will be invited to make an appointment for a test at a participating optometry practice or with the mobile service.
Newly diagnosed patients can attend a structured education programme to help with their symptoms; the programme consists of a three hour session delivered by a trained educator and a dietician delivering information to patients diagnosed with type 2 diabetes within the last 12 months. Attending patients will receive resource packs containing diabetes related information including foot-care, eye care and diet.
A more detailed course is offered to newly diagnosed patients with Type 1 diabetes. It consists of number of sessions offering advice on how to manage the condition and takes place at The Oxford Centre for Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism (OCDEM) at the Churchill hospital. It is delivered by specialist diabetes nurses.
Paediatric services for children with diabetes are provided into the county by the specialist team based at the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust.