Awareness week

12/07/2013

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Home Artificial Nutrition (HANs) Week 5-12 August 2013

During Home Artificial Nutrition Week, we will be highlighting ways in which AN patients and their families carers in partnership with the doctors, nurses, dietitians and pharmacists who provide care can improve the patient experience. The focus for this event will be HPN with HEN as the next campaign. There is no better time for PINNT to be encouraging better dialogue between all on artificial nutrition and their healthcare professionals, says Chair of PINNT Carolyn Wheatley. The NHS has declared that the patient must be at the heart of all services provided, and importantly the recently published NICE Quality Standards for Nutrition Support * promise improved training and support for patients and their families.

Patients and healthcare professionals do not always have the same priorities - what matters from a clinical perspective is not always what matters to us as individuals living with AN day in, day out. That gap can often interfere with establishing and maintaining good patient/professional relationships and improving experience. As patients we know we can help close that gap and during this first Home Artificial Nutrition (HANs) Week we are contacting those professionals to open up a meaningful dialogue to establish how we can best deliver the promised improvements.

In preparation for HANs Week, PINNT is writing direct to doctors, nurses, dietitians, paediatricians and pharmacists to raise awareness of the promises embedded in the NICE Quality Standard and to enquire how best to take this agenda forward and establish improved dialogue between patients and professionals. PINNT have prepared two leaflets on the NICE Quality Standard - one for professionals and one for patients - which will be published at the start of the week right here on our website!

In parallel, we will be posting on our website and social media outlets, a new story each day for the 7 days of the Week of adults and children on AN therapy, together with their priority wish for improving their own healthcare experience.

* NICE Quality Standard for Nutrition Support in Adults http://publications.nice.org.uk/quality-standard-for-nutrition-support-in-adults-qs24

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