The role of the Acute Liaison Nursing Team in hospital is to ensure that reasonable adjustments are put in place to reduce the risks of the persons learning disability leading to poor health outcomes. This includes patients that may be at the end of their life.
This can mean offering clinical recommendations to hospital staff about how to best adjust acute care to meet the needs of people with a learning disability. It can also involve signposting or referring patients to external LD specialist services, liaising with those LD services involved in the persons care, training hospital staff to improve services offered and working with the Trusts Strategically to reinforce a good level and quality of service is provided to people with Learning Disabilities when they access hospital.
An acute learning disability specialist practitioner will help ensure the appropriate referrals and considerations are made for an individual at the end of their life when they access hospital care. This can include:
- Sharing knowledge of the person’s communication needs, etc via ‘My Purple Folder’
- Helping an individual to understand what tests/treatments they require within the hospital.
- Helping an individual to understand their diagnosis; this will always take place alongside other medical or surgical professionals.
- Supporting the individual to make decisions regarding their care in hospital.
- Advocating for the person to have reasonable adjustments made to their care.
- Supporting colleagues in the hospital (including palliative care services) to understand the individual’s learning disability.
- Signposting to other external services that may be able to offer support.
The Acute Liaison Nursing team will work jointly with the Palliative care services and paid/family carers to ensure effective care is provided for the person at the end of their life.” Please delete all the bullet points as unnecessary. Keep the last paragraph with Contact details but please change the title to say The Acute Liaison Nursing Team covers all the hospitals in Hertfordshire and should be notified by the hospital of a person with learning disabilities admission, however if you are concerned contact the team on healthliaisonteam.referrals@hertfordshire.gov.uk or telephone 01438 845372.