The stoma care team based at the James Paget are celebrating a double success after Coloplast UK was awarded an ‘Outstanding’ CQC inspection rating and one of the team members was named their ‘Nurse of the Year’.
Coloplast provides community-based specialist stoma, bladder and bowel management care to patients and partners with the NHS to support individuals living with a stoma. At the James Paget, our stoma nurses are employed by the company, while being an important part of the hospital and patient support team. Now the business has been awarded the highest possible rating by Care Quality Commission (CQC) for its nursing and telehealth service, making them the only company in their field to have received an ‘Outstanding’ rating for a service like this in England.
Meanwhile Clinical Nurse Specialist for Coloplast Helen Cox (pictured), who leads the stoma care team at the James Paget, has been named Nurse of the Year for going above and beyond during the pandemic.
Soon after Covid-19 forced a nationwide lockdown Helen came up with an idea to support vulnerable patients. Together with her colleagues, she went through their list of 1,600 patients in the Great Yarmouth and Waveney area to identify those who they thought might need some additional support. This included patients aged over 70 who were known not to have an immediate source of help, such as a relative, living with them. Around 210 were identified and the team set about contacting these patients via telephone regularly, to make sure they were safe and well.
With many patients in their 80s having no relatives living locally, the calls provided both a social lifeline and a welfare check, with an in-person visit being made if they initially received no answer. The team often stepped up to provide additional support such as picking up essential groceries.
In addition to looking after patients in the community, Helen and her colleagues also stepped up to provide support to our ward teams at the height of the pandemic, providing additional expertise at a time when staffing was particularly stretched.
Helen says; “We wanted to look after both the physical and mental health of our patients during the pandemic and provide some of the assistance that was missing after our support groups had to stop. Some of our patients hadn’t seen anybody and didn’t have anyone to chat to so, while this was resource intensive, we thought it was worthwhile. It may have helped prevent other interventions being required too, as we were able to provide early assistance where it was needed.”
Helen, who has worked for Coloplast at the James Paget for nearly a decade has seen the team’s approach to supporting patients with stomas pay off, with a ‘Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT)’ model providing 100% positive feedback.
“We work closely with patients when they first have to have a stoma, using body profiling to ensure patients get a fit that meets their needs. By getting it right first time we aim to make the whole experience as easy as it can be.”
All of this work contributed to Helen winning Coloplast’s Nurse of the Year 2021 – a title she secured for the second time in her career after winning in 2015 too.
The team work closely with the Stoma Care team at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Kings Lynn, another Coloplast team, who provide support to patients with a stoma or requiring continence support.
The CQC ‘Outstanding’ inspection report noted that the staff at Coloplast’s nursing and telehealth service “treated patients with compassion and kindness and respected their privacy and dignity. Staff took account of their individual needs and helped them understand their conditions.”
The report also “found highly dedicated and passionate staff who were committed to providing a good service for patients and partner organisations” and highlighted that staff were positive, knowledgeable and passionate about their work. The full report can be found at; https://api.cqc.org.uk/public/v1/reports/749211ac-96a2-48b5-994a-e7a18adfd460?20210810070036