Information
The District Nursing Service are a skilled and specialist nursing team, who deliver a wide range of nursing assessments and interventions to people in their own homes.
The service supports individuals to be independent, manage their long-term conditions and prevent or treat illness. Nursing requirements associated with disability, frailty, chronic disease management and end of life care can usually be delivered safely in a patient’s home.
The service provides person centred and co-ordinated care which helps prevent unnecessary hospital admissions and enables people to remain in their own home.
New referral forms are being used to improve and standardise the referral process and ensure that the information that is conveyed is clear, accurate and complete. It also reduces the time spent on admin by the nurses and releases them to provide clinical care to the appropriate patients.
Who can refer:
We will accept referrals from all health care professionals in both Primary and Secondary Care.
Who to refer:
District nurses provide high quality nursing interventions to individuals who are housebound or in clinically agreed circumstances where care is best provided in their homes.
Treatment plans will be explicitly agreed with individuals, using an evidence-based approach to help them regain maximum independence and health. Services include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Wound care assessments and care
- Administration of treatment or medication using specialist equipment, after a nursing assessment, appropriate for the DN team.
- Continence assessments and care planning
- Pressure area assessments and care
- Admission avoidance support which requires nursing Interventions
- Health needs assessments of chronic disease management requiring generalist nursing input
- Palliative/end-of-life care
- Health promotion for housebound patients and their carers
- Assessment and appropriate provision of specialist nursing equipment for patients in their own homes
- Teaching self-care procedures to enable patients, and their carers, to manage their own healthcare needs within the confines of their own home
Who not to refer:
These include, but are not limited to:
- Routine bloods (including INRs) for patients who have no nursing needs that require specialist district nursing interventions
- Vaccinations for patients who have no nursing needs that require specialist district nursing interventions.
- “Check visits” without clearly identified and agreed nursing needs.
- Emptying or changing urine bags.
- Routine skin care that does not require trained nursing skills.
- Administration of eye drops, nasal or oral medication.
- Filling Dosette boxes.
- Collecting and delivering prescriptions.
- Filling in medication administration charts for patients that the district nurses are not already actively seeing.
- Supporting people with social care needs alone. Patients who need help with personal hygiene, bathing, meals, housework, toileting, applying/removing hosiery, getting up/going to bed, access to day centre or respite care, should be referred directly to Social Services.
How to refer:
For Primary Care clinicians in Edinburgh practices, please continue to refer in the normal way.
For Primary Care clinicians in East, Mid and West Lothian, email relevant HSCP mailbox with the following information:
- Patient’s details – Name, CHI Number or date of birth and patient’s address.
- Purpose of referral.
- Urgency of the referral.
- Attaching a summary sheet would be helpful to the district nurses, allowing them to triage and progress the referral as quickly as possible.
East Lothian loth.eldnteams@nhs.scot
Midlothian loth.mldnteams@nhs.scot
West Lothian loth.wldnteams@nhs.scot
For Secondary Care and all other Health Professionals, please complete the form below and then send an email to the relevant HSCP mailbox attaching the form.
