NURSING

Director, Gráinne Bourke

It's been a productive year for the Nursing Department with staff developments! St Michaels House now has a Clinical Nurse Specialist Acute Hospital Liaison Nurse (CNSp AHL) in place to liaise with residential service users while in hospital. The Mental Health of Intellectual Disability (MHID) team has expanded to support more individuals with mental health difficulties.

St. Michaels House is now a site partner with DCU for undergraduate RNIDs. A new role of Clinical Placement Coordinator and Student Allocations Liaison Officer was engaged to provide essential education and supports to registered nurses supporting students on placements from external hospitals alongside supports for the student nurses who started in St Michaels House in September 2021.

Nurse Practice Development Coordinator (NPDC) with CNM2 Integrated Care post, researched, developed and implemented digital education programmes to reach the service user and support team in their home. This was achieved by the use of QR Codes for the first time in St. Michaels House.

As of October 2022, and for the first time, SMH has two candidate Advanced Nurse Practitioners in Mental Health of Intellectual Disability and Paediatric Neurodisability.

Nursing supported service users throughout Covid procedures with guidance, advice, testing and nonacute isolation.

Nursing presented at many conferences in 2022 including poster presentation success at The Power of Nurses/ Midwives to Influence Change, NMPDU North Conference.

Presented to Community Infection Prevention & Control (IPC) teams nationally on the difficulties of managing outbreaks in a disability setting. This is now a standalone module on the IPC Link Practitioner course nationally. It was also key in the development of the National Forum for IPC in Disability Services. CNSp IPC represents St Michaels House on this forum.

Appointment of CNM1 in Infection Prevention & Control (IPC) Nov

2022 and seven IPC link nurses trained within SMH to support IPC and Hand Hygiene Training. IPC training is updated to reflect requirements by HIQA based on their Regulation 27 inspections which included three webinars for staff and IPC Policies reviewed and updated/changed as necessary.

Projects 2022

‘Getting to know me group’, - a weekly group arranged for service users who are living with dementia.

Challenges for 2022

Increases in service users accessing acute hospital care and planning towards safe discharges with changing and aging need.

Grants/Fundraising money received in 2022

The magic table through the Nursing and Midwifery Planning Development Unit

(NMPDU) Service Improvement Innovation

Key Achievements

• A focus on promoting and advocating for eHealth, supporting the education of staff and service users.

• The creation and development of online resources and providing guidance to staff on the use/benefits of differing technologies and software to promote various health and safety initiatives

• Service users have played a direct role in the development of educational resources for their peers and have been supported to deliver online information sessions through the Activity Hub (examples include Make Every Movement Count, Sun Safety, Oral Health Awareness Week, which included collaboration with the National Dental Hospital and colleagues across other disability services).

• Created an environment where more service users are increasingly digitally literate

Initiatives 2022. The magic table awakens and motivates people who are living with dementia. The magic table is a fun care innovation that connects people living with dementia to each other. This fully portable magic table can be played anywhere in the service users home. The interactive games break through apathy by stimulating physical, cognitive and social interaction. The magic table supports people who are living with dementia to take part in activities that are appropriate to their current ability whilst offering a failure free experience that is person centred.

• Programmes such as online digital safety awareness are now a focus through a recent collaboration with An Cosán.

• Advocating for the adoption/adaptation of new technologies to enhance the lives of service users, carers and families remains a priority

• Collaborative ways of learning together are centric to this to ensure sustainability.

Spark funding received to develop online Sleep Kit for families and staff, joint initiative with nursing and psychology from CAMHS-ID and MHID teams, to be launched in 2023. Eight nurses were funded by NMPDU to complete post graduate programme. CREATE Project was awarded €86,000 to implement the National Health Passport for People with an Intellectual Disability across adult respite services in SMH. The funding has enabled us to recruit two part time Project Coordinators to work directly with service users staff, and families to introduce to the health passport - two formats are available a paper version or app version. SMH is also very well represented on the recently convened National Expert Advisory Group to review and realise the national project ideals for the Health Passport through the National Disability Office in the HSE.