Hospital to adopt new nurse role

The nurse consultant is a new grade of senior nurse, created by the Government with the aim of giving nurses a role more like that of a hospital medical consultant.

Airedale NHS Trust will appoint the specialist nurse later this month to work in the critical care area of the hospital.

The appointment comes as part of the modernisation of critical care in Airedale, with two extra high dependency beds due to open before December 1. In total, the trust will then have three intensive care beds and four high dependency beds at Airedale General Hospital.

Doug Farrow, trust director of planning, said the new beds would be open by December to meet the expected winter pressures experienced in health services.

The role of the nurse consultant will be to support intensive care work throughout the hospital, look at the effectiveness of treatments given and help to provide education programmes. Mr Farrow said: "Critical care should be wider than just intensive care and high dependency beds but some patients on wards who have critical care needs can be managed on the ward with complex needs."

High dependency care is half way between hi-tech intensive care and treatment on the ward. For some patients, they can move to high dependency care after a spell on intensive care, or it can be used for ill patients to prevent them getting sicker and needing intensive care.

The cost of two extra high dependency beds is £250,422 in capital costs of building and equipment, and £203,750 in running costs. The trust made a successful bid to fund the beds.

Mr Farrow said: "A key element of the bid is flexibility which will allow the trust to convert the staffing support for two high dependency beds into staffing support for one intensive care bed when required. This additional capacity should both reduce the level of transfers of intensive care cases out of Airedale General Hospital and continue to help support other hospitals with capacity problems."