Homeless heart patients to receive more support from award-winning hospital-led programme
Dr Dargoi Satchi, Consultant Cardiologist Dr Elizabeth Whittaker, Junior Doctor
UHNM cardiologists are leading on a one-of-a-kind multidisciplinary approach to caring for homeless people. Dr Dargoi Satchi, consultant cardiologist, and Dr Elizabeth Whittaker, junior doctor, have initiated a programme to bring support services together to ensure homeless people and those with complex needs receive the best possible care, thereby increasing their chance of survival and recovery after they present with a heart problem. The team have been given the ‘Insight Expert Patient National Award’ by Expert Citizens, a community interest company led by people with lived experience of homelessness, mental ill-health, addiction, domestic abuse, poverty or histories of offending behaviour.
Dr Dargoi Satchi said: “Elizabeth and I cared for patients with heart infections which are contributed to by a history of substance abuse. We soon realised that social, financial, housing care and help with substance abuse were as important as the intensive medical care the ward team were providing. We also realised that we could provide some of this other care on an inpatient basis if only we knew who to contact or how to access these services.
“We set out to try and create a directory of these services so that ward staff would know what services were available and to consider the different complex needs of patients with substance abuse, which are often only the very tip of the many other problems they have.
“Knowing about these other services was the first step to building a lasting relationship which would benefit our patients in the future. We know that patients with substance abuse are more likely to have medical complications and readmissions than similar patients without a substance abuse history and we hoped that any extra help we could source may improve patient outcomes.
“We were determined to do something about this, so we set up a study day to get all of the support services together to learn what we could do better in the future. Specifically, we wanted to see whether we could tackle the issues around substance abuse in parallel with the four-to-six weeks of inpatient medical treatment that these patients need. We intend to run the study day repeatedly in an attempt to change attitudes to managing this often challenging group of patients.”
The INSIGHT awards celebrate examples of outstanding practice.
Dr Elizabeth Whittaker said: “Common attitudes are that patients with substance misuse are time-wasters and that their health problems are self-inflicted. Therefore, their care isn't prioritised. In reality, they can be difficult and challenging to care for, but with time, education and resources we can support them. Their care requires a holistic approach which encompasses psychological and social support alongside their medical needs, so we wanted to develop a multidisciplinary workshop where we can learn from each other and support these vulnerable patients throughout their admission.
“All of this couldn’t have happened without the help of volunteer speakers, who kindly shared their time and expertise and really went the extra mile for their patients. This has created an opportunity for tangible change and hopefully the course will be repeated with more and more professionals involved in the future. To receive the award from people with lived experiences means such a lot. We want to say a very big thank you to everyone involved, it really was a massive team effort.”
The initiative brought together a cross-section of support organisations, including community outreach service VOICES, the Community Drugs and Alcohol Service and the Citizens Advice Bureau.
Our sincere thanks go to…
VOICES - Anna Mather, Elena Casilli and Lee Dale, who discussed the role of VOICES and shared lived experiences
Tayler Bagnall - The role of CDAS (Community Drugs and Alcohol Service)
Geoff Davies - Citizens Advice Bureau - Rights to housing
Christ Fieldhouse - workshopped substance misuse
Dr Derrett Watts - managing opiate misuse
Jeremy Miu - prescribing in substance misuse
Jane Morton - Homeless health services
Dr Muhammed Sedig - Presented his audit data from UHNMENDS