The Scottish Borders has welcomed its first Admiral Nurse – a community-based specialist dementia nurse who works alongside people with dementia and their loved ones in the community, giving expert practical, clinical and emotional solutions people need to live well.

healthandcare.scot has spoken to new Admiral Nurse Lynn Weir and Dementia UK’s Area Business Development Manager (North and Scotland), Rebecca Ward-Dooley, to find out more about the new service before it officially launches later this month.

Lynn Weir is the first Admiral Nurse to be employed by an NHS board in Scotland, through a new collaboration between Dementia UK and Scottish Borders Health and Social Care Partnership.

The new role will see Lynn, working as part of the wider Primary and Community Services team who support people with dementia, provide expert guidance and emotional support during complex or crisis situations.

She will also work closely with health and social care professionals to coordinate care, provide education and advocate for people with dementia and their families.

Lynn – a former district nurse – has spent the last three months developing the new service and has now begun seeing her first patients.

She says:

“What we do is provide compassionate care, not just to the person living with dementia, but also to their care partner, whether that be their family, friends or neighbour.

“We’re there at the really challenging and difficult times in a person’s life: prior to diagnosis, coming to terms with changes in partnership or family dynamic and caring, through to advanced care planning and people moving into end of life and bereavement.

“A huge part is people feeling empowered, being given the right resources and tools to live well. Support services are out there but it’s about people getting to them.”

The new Admiral Nurse service pilot will officially launch just weeks after estimates suggest the prevalence of dementia across Scotland will rise by more than 50% by 2044.

Around 950 people are thought to be living with dementia in the Scottish Borders.

Lynn will be based within general practices across Hawick and Galashiels – two areas with some of the highest levels of deprivation and dementia in the region.

She says her placement here is strategically designed to provide early detection and intervention to people most in need:

“It’s also about reaching people in the Scottish Borders who can’t access a lot of service, as it can be quite remote.

“Because I’m in primary care, I can be flexible and visit people in their own homes.

“It takes away the feeling of isolation for a lot of people.”

The launch of the Borders service marks the beginning of charity Dementia UK’s efforts to grow its reach in Scotland and expand the Admiral Nurse footprint, which is already well established in parts of England, north of the border.

Dementia UK’s Business Development Manager (North and Scotland), Rebecca Ward-Dooley, says the charity will support Lynn to evaluate her the new service – including the impact on patients, families and NHS services:

“This includes carer quality of life surveys – speaking to carers about how their quality of life has been changed – and stakeholder surveys with other agencies and parts of the NHS involved to see the impact.

“We also collect data on referrals, what interventions have been delivered, and the categories of support they need.

“Admiral Nurses like Lynn can nip things in the bud, like UTIs and unplanned A&E admissions.

"One of the big aims of Admiral Nursing as a model is to ensure people can stay at home for as long as possible.”

People living outwith the Borders can access Admiral Nurse support at selected Nationwide branches across Scotland, or through Dementia UK’s Admiral Nurse Dementia hotline, accessible on 0800 888 6678 or helpline@dementiauk.org.   

The Armed Forces community and their families living with dementia also have access to Admiral Nurse services through Poppy Scotland.

For now, the charity continues to support Lynn to learn from best practice and develop the new service with the help of its community of hundreds of Admiral Nurses based across the UK.

As referrals from GPs pick up, the new Borders' service will also accept referrals from social care providers and third sector groups following its official launch later this month.

Lynn says her priority will always be on getting to know patients and their families, so she can offer the highest quality of support at all stages of their journey with dementia:

"Once a family carer or person living with dementia is referred to me, they can directly refer back: they can come back again and again, because obviously their needs will change.

“They have that link so that they don't suddenly feel lost in that system."

 

Read more: Dementia rise estimate should be “wake up call”; Fair funding to see Scotland lead dementia research;

 

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