What a varied month July has been for me in terms of events!
First came a Butterfly Scheme launch at City Healthcare Partnership, an organisation where teams cover inpatient care, district nursing and therapy, through to a hospice and two prisons. It was excellent to experience all those teams working together to ensure a smooth transition for patients needing dementia care within and between any of those services.
Interestingly, the next launch was for a hospice coming into the Butterfly Scheme independently of neighbouring services, although local hospitals do already have the scheme and there’ll now be excellent liaison for anyone using both services. The many teams at Douglas Macmillan Hospice (affectionately known as Dougie Mac) were all keen to learn how, in their many roles, they can best work to support the scheme’s delivery. It was especially pleasing to be bringing in the scheme under the leadership of Admiral Nurse Wendy, who is clearly valued greatly by the whole team and all the families.
In-between those two rather different launches came an event to mark the 70th anniversary of the NHS. It was a great pleasure to be invited to join the fabulous dementia team at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust for their 70th Birthday FunDay, which was the central focus of a fundraising effort which will allow them to further enhance their dementia care. Dementia Lead Karen had organised a fun run as part of the day and additional donations were also handed over by various individuals and hospital teams. I enjoyed helping on the Dementia Team stall and heard so many stories from people who were hugely complimentary about the team’s care for loved ones.
Definitely a month to reflect on how far dementia care has now come – and whilst there’s always more to do, it’s important to recognise excellent progress in so many areas within the last few years.