Nurses at Moorfields administer a third of all eye injections. Photograph: Moorfields eye hospitalNurses at Moorfields eye hospital NHS foundation trust in London have been trained to give eye injections to patients in a groundbreaking move, which is changing professional practice and benefiting patients.
The hospital decided to teach senior nurses how to administer the drug Lucentis as an injection in the eye because of increased patient demand, following new national clinical guidelines and a lack of ophthalmologists to carry out the procedure. New guidelines from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) recommended that Lucentis should be injected into the eye to treat patients with diabetic maculopathy.
The decision put more pressure on the hospital because its doctors were already busy administering 10,000 Lucentis eye injections every year to patients with the wet form of age-related macular degeneration.
Moorfields decided to train its senior nurse to give the eye injections, even though it was opposed by the Royal College of Ophthalmologists because Lucentis is only licensed in the UK to be administered by a doctor.
Hospital lawyers were consulted and a special patient consent form was drawn up. The NHS Litigation Authority also guaranteed the nurses the various liability cover they needed.
So far, 15 Moorfields nurses have given 3,000 eye injections, representing 33% of the hospital's eye injection workload. Moorfields has also been able to run 15 extra eye injection sessions a week because of the new skills mix.
Moorfields fellow Joanna DaCosta says: "This model of working is instrumental in removing professional barriers, increasing job satisfaction and providing a cost effective healthcare system."
The success of the initiative is illustrated by the decision in May taken by the Royal College of Ophthalmologists to issue new guidelines that non-medically trained professionals can administer eye injections, provided they have appropriate training and supervision.
This article is published by Guardian Professional. Join the Healthcare Professionals Network to receive regular emails and exclusive offers.
No comments:
Post a Comment