Mrs Davis’ story

Here we see how Age UK in Nottinghamshire is providing essential non-medical support which has helped people to live healthy lives and maintain their independence, as well as free up local services and helped to address their re-occurring clinical and emergency admissions.

Mrs Davis had poor mobility, was house bound and struggled with swelling of her legs. She was suffering with recurring leg ulcers and the District Nurses would visit her 2-3 times a week over a period until the ulcers were healed and then discharge Mrs Davis.

Once discharged Mrs Davis was required to maintain her legs by washing and creaming them and then wearing compression hosiery. Unfortunately, Mrs Davis wasn’t able to carry out the tasks effectively – especially the putting on of the compression stockings as this was too difficult on her own. Consequently, her legs would break down again and she would be back on the District Nurse’s caseload.

After a while, the District Nurse noticed that this was a reoccurring pattern and referred Mrs Davis to the local Age UK Living Well Service, to see if the cycle of discharge and readmission could be broken. Age UK was able to provide a person to regularly visit Mrs Davis to help her wash, cream and put on her compression hosiery.  Shortly afterwards, the non-clinical support provided by Age UK resulted in breaking the cycle of a recurring clinical need. Consequently, this has resulted in Mrs Davis now being able to regain some of her mobility whilst reducing her on-going nursing costs and creating capacity for the District Nursing team to assign to other patients.