Last updated at 15:31, Friday, 29 June 2012

FURNESS General Hospital’s Liz Heffernan spends her working life surrounded by people – carefully dividing her time between doctors, nurses, therapists, patients, their families and carers. In the latest installment of her exclusive series documenting life behind the scenes at FGH, EMMA PRESTON jumped the queue to grab a chat with the ward six manager

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FOR every nurse, the job is all about other people.

Helping patients get better, supporting fellow medical professionals, communicating with families and carers worried about their poorly relatives – everything a nurse does is for the good of those around them.

But Liz Heffernan, ward six manager at Furness General Hospital, seems to take this characteristic to a new level. Her favourite part of her job is not about any benefit it brings her personally.

“It’s all about helping my junior staff, and supporting and encouraging them, because I want them to become sisters of the future,” she says.

“I’m working with them all the time, to build their experience and give them confidence in what they do. It gives me a real sense of achievement to see them progress.”

Watching the way Liz’s staff swarm around her as she guides me around the ward, I’m given ample opportunity to see this relationship in action.

As she picks up the phone to make calls about an individual patient’s care, fellow medical staff, student nurses and even the ward’s young health and social care cadets – on placement from Furness College – are constantly showing her patients’ notes, asking her questions and seeking advice.

Others pull her aside to talk to families and carers who have come to visit their loved ones and want to know how they are progressing.

This type of busy interaction, juggling her regular day-to-day tasks while constantly liaising with others, is just the norm for Liz.

Throughout the course of her working day, she will be called regularly to see patients by fellow nurses in need of help or advice.

She does this while taking overall responsibility for everything that goes on during her watch.

Liz says: “I oversee all the care for patients and pull it all together – between the medical teams, the physiotherapists, the occupational therapists – everyone who could be involved.

“It’s about looking at the patients’ overall care and making sure they’re getting the right thing at the right time, it’s about good communication with patients and relatives, making sure we keep them involved, and it’s about providing the level of experience to help make sure our patients get the best care we can give.”

A trained nurse who has worked at FGH for 32 years, Liz has been a ward manager for 10 and on ward six for the last five.

One of her main responsibilities is planning patients’ discharge, including liaising with outside bodies such as social services and other community health programmes to make sure they will be looked after on leaving hospital.

She makes appointments for patients on her ward to see staff in other areas of the hospital, as well as arranging scans and tests for them.

Liz is also tasked with providing expertise in the area of medicine catered for by her ward – in this case, stroke patients – by keeping up to date with the regular developments made in care strategies.

And she is responsible for all human resources work that needs doing on her ward, plus making sure the place is kept shipshape by organising cleanliness audits, bed audits, patient care spot-checks and other regular check-ups.

The pride she takes in this is evident as you walk the ward six corridors with her, taking in walls lined with laminated posters and cards she has created to help share information, routines and standards.

But Liz takes great care to stay involved in doing what brought her into the job in the first place, paying close personal attention to every single one of the ward’s 36 patients.

“What I do is quite hands-on,” she assures me. “I still give patient care and I like to think I know all the patients.

“I like to see everybody of a morning, then I’ll oversee patient care generally for the rest of the day.”

The relationship she builds with each patient means it is just as special for Liz as it is for all the ward six staff when a patient is finally well enough to leave them.
“It really is a sense of achievement when they can return home,” she says.

“You see someone come in and they can’t walk, they can’t eat or swallow for themselves, they’re struggling to talk, and then gradually you get to see them improving until they can do those thing again and you’re ready to help them go home.

“And that’s what’s brilliant, that’s what’s really special about it.

“You can think to yourself, ‘I helped do that’.”

Because their ward caters for a specific condition, Liz and her team are lucky enough to receive regular donations from grateful former patients and their families.
But their pride in what they do drives them to get involved in fundraising themselves – with 16 ward six staff having taken on the Keswick to Barrow sponsored walk in a bid to pay for new equipment.

Of her team, Liz says: “They work really hard, they’re so motivated in what they do and are always wanting to strive to give the best they possibly can to our patients.
“It helps to be motivated by what you do and enjoy it, it has a much better effect on the team and on your patients.”

Reflecting on the contribution she clearly makes to the positive attitude and friendly atmosphere that surround ward six, she adds: “I love what I do, I wouldn’t do anything else.

“I just think it’s a real variety job – you can give hands-on care but you can plan what’s happening, you can shape patients’ journeys, and you can have such an influence on the care that’s given.

“You can make a real impact on a patient’s life.”

First published at 15:13, Friday, 29 June 2012
Published by http://www.nwemail.co.uk