PERSONAL contact with seriously ill patients is being stretched to the limit for community specialist nurses in Dorset.

The Weldmar Hospicecare Trust’s valuable service is facing an ever-growing demand, which is not being matched by funding.

Around 11 community nurses work for the charity, offering complex symptom management, treatment and support to patients with life-threatening illnesses.

Not only do they provide end-of-life care for cancer sufferers, patients with heart conditions and respiratory diseases, but the nurses also have a big educational role – with colleagues in the Primary Care Trust (PCT) and nursing home staff.

Linda Morrison, manager of the trust’s community nurse team, said: “This is a really valuable but stretched service at the moment.

“What we know is patients and carers do appreciate face-to-face contact but work pressures mean we have to do more telephone contacts than we used to.

“The distances our nurses have to travel are quite vast sometimes, particularly in north Dorset.”

She added: “We see it as an increasing service with the same amount of nurses, so our work is full steam all the time.

“There’s a phenomenal amount people don’t see.

“Of course there are lots of very good GPs, district nurses and hospital staff, such as cancer nurse specialists, who look after people who are dying.

“It’s just that sometimes they need our specialist advice.”

Two of the trust’s full-time specialist palliative nurses are based at the Dorset County Hospital in Dorchester, where they advise and support patients and advise ward nurses and doctors on pain and symptom relief.

Ms Morrison is currently juggling her usual management role with covering two patches in Bridport and the surrounding area due to staff shortages.

She said her team had seen a rise in demand in Weymouth in the last year, which was partly due to an expansion of life-threatening illnesses covered by the charity.

She said: “The majority of our work tends to be with cancer patients but there’s been an increase in referrals for non-malignant diseases such as heart failure or respiratory diseases.

“Another big area of concern is dementia and we try to ensure best practice for these people too.”

Ms Morrison has 20 years of palliative care experience and moved from Northamptonshire to Dorset two years ago.

She said a key area of the nurses’ work was collaborating with their Primary Care Trust colleagues – GPs, district nurses and NHS hospital teams.

Ms Morrison said: “Essentially all our work is in people’s homes or in hospitals and our professional life is working with professionals in the NHS.

“We try to work jointly for the best interest of the patient really.”

She added: “We do a lot of support for hospital nurses because they’re so pressurised looking after people who are perhaps dying in busy areas.”

Ms Morrison said community nurse referral meant patients gained ‘the whole service of Weldmar’.

Community nurses are able to refer patients directly to day care facilities, the Joseph Weld Hospice and medical colleagues.

They can also arrange complementary therapy for patients and carers, such as massage and Reiki.

Ms Morrison said: “We’re constantly liaising with the consultants and other specialist areas in the trust such as the family support team’s children’s worker and bereavement services.”

Nurses can also address psychological or spiritual needs by allowing people time to explore their feelings and emotions regarding their life.

Ms Morrison said: “There’re a lot of losses that they face from losing a family member to having all of their dreams and goals taken away from them.

“The thing about this role is we tend to have a holistic view of it affecting the whole family, not just the patient.”

Ms Morrison said the nurses’ biggest challenge was allowing people ‘to live as well as possible for as long as possible’.

She added: “We’d like to be able to increase our service that we provide.

“Of course we can’t accommodate everyone, there’s no way we could function but we’d like to increase our education to all other professionals including nursing homes and residential care homes.

“The Echo campaign to raise £60,000 for a community nurse for a year would help to fund all of that.”