Iain Rennie nurses carry on caring despite the snow
Our fantastic nurses have been working hard to ensure that patients continue to receive the best possible care despite the bad weather that the area has been experiencing recently.
Iain Rennie nurses are currently caring for 288 terminally ill people in their own homes throughout the Chilterns area, and the location of some patients has made reaching them quite challenging over recent weeks, especially for night-time visits. Some nurses have walked up to an hour to reach a patient's house as the roads were either too treacherous or, in some cases, completely impassable.
Sue Varvel, Director of Nursing: "All of our nurses have worked extremely hard in partnership with District Nurses and GP out-of-hours services to maintain a 24hour on-call service for our patients. Some elements of our normal service inevitably had to be compromised, as we simply could not reach some patients, but when travelling to a patient's house was impossible we were still able to provide support over the telephone, even in the middle of the night."
Volunteers with four-wheel drive vehicles also helped by taking nurses to houses that would otherwise have been out of reach, and picking the nurses up when the visit had finished.
Sue continued: "We are so very grateful to those people who gave up their time to drive our nurses to patients' houses. This really does show that community spirit is alive and well in the Chilterns, and made all the difference to the patients who were able to stay at home and be supported at this difficult and challenging time."
If you own a four-wheel drive vehicle and would like to be added to Iain Rennie's register of volunteer drivers, to help drive nurses to patients' homes in extreme weather, please register your interest with Rozina Ahmad , Voluntary Services Manager, on 01494 877200 or email rahmad@irhh.org
12th January 2010
