Wali Nazar - better known as NAZ
Rupinder Kaur - Bilingual Health Support Worker
Bradford Community Palliative Care Team
Bradford Marie Curie Hospice
Maudsley Street
Bradford West Yorkshire BD3 9LE
Tel: 01274 323511
or mobile 07950 260450
Fax: 01274 323506
Email: wali.nazar@bdct.nhs.uk
NAZ
This role commenced in May 2000 and was initially funded by Macmillan Cancer Supportfor the first 3 years and then taken over by:
⅓ PCTs, (shared between 3 PCTs)
⅓ Hospitals NHS Trust
⅓ Marie Curie Hospice Bradford
(funding split 3 ways)
Naz is based with the community specialist palliative care team but this new innovative role is a great example of collaborative working between different agencies and care settings, i.e. primary and secondary care settings, Social Services providers, Macmillan Cancer Support, Marie Curie Hospice and other voluntary and charitable organisations. This involves working with patients / carers in hospitals, in their own homes and any other location where they may be in need of services.
The role was created to improve and maintain the quality of specialist palliative care available to Minority Ethnic patients / carers by improving communication and facilitating their access to services.
There is also the need to raise the profile of palliative care in these communities and also within other agencies e.g. Social Services and the voluntary sector.
Naz has improved communication on both sides i.e. for patients / carers as well as service providers. This includes the interpretation of culture as well as language.
He accompanies the patient / carer through their “ cancer journey” and will give information about tests, diagnosis, prognosis, treatments and will help professionals assess needs and identify a holistic, culturally appropriate, acceptable and sensitive individual care package. Whatever the needs, he will try to signpost services from which they will benefit the most.
The experiences and lessons learnt from this role have already been shared across health and social care services in Bradford and across cancer/ palliative care service providers across the UK. This has contributed to service developments, new ways of thinking and resulted in a few similar posts being set up elsewhere.
There has been an extensive service review by line managers from all the different service providers who are involved with this role. There has also been an evaluation carried out by:
1) patients and carers
2) hospital medical, clinical and support staff
3) community medical, clinical and support staff
The feed back has been extremely positive and useful. Due to increasing demands and an increasing workload, new funding is being pursued to develop and expand this service and employ additional workers.
This service was entered for the 2001 Department of Health and Social Care Awards under the category “Improving lives of people with cancer” and was awarded with a commendation by the Secretary for Health and a £2000 cheque to help improve the service.
There was also a request to submit an article in the International Journal of Palliative Nursing and this article was accepted and published in August 2001. Volume 7, Number 8, "Effective palliative care for minority ethnic groups, the role of a liaison worker ". This article was based on the first 10 months in post and looks at a few case histories and tries to give a taste of the different types of complex problems i.e. cultural / religious as well as medical, social and emotional that are faced when dealing with patients / carers.
Please feel free to contact Naz with any queries or questions that you think he may be able to help you with.
RUPINDER
Rupinder liaises between the clients, carers/families and professionals providing palliative care and acts as a resource to help identify health and social needs so these can be met. We provide accurate information in a sensitive manner and in a language the client/carer understands. The aim is to improve and maintain quality of care by helping colleagues understand issues around culture and religion. The work involves sign posting and raising awareness amongst the ethnic minority communities of the services offered in primary, secondary and hospice settings. The post holder participates in weekly multi-disciplinary team meetings, updating professionals on the clients' new symptoms and offering advice, updates and reinforcing professional recommendations to the clients. This is done either through visiting the client or communicating over the phone.
Working in the Community Palliative Care Team as part of the Macmillan GP Facilitation Team, the role of the Bilingual Health Support Worker (BHSW) involves providing more than just an interpreting service. Due to the nature of the work it involves providing a lot of emotional support, not only to the patient but also to the carer and other members of the family. This can be from referral, through the patient’s cancer journey and at times bereavement support for many months afterwards.
There is now an increase in language and cultural expertise when providing services to users and when providing in house education for service providers.
This role was created to improve and maintain the quality of specialist palliative care available to ethnic minority patients/carers by improving communication and facilitating their access to services.
There is also the need to raise the profile of palliative care in these communities and also within other agencies e.g. Social Services and the voluntary sector.
One of the reasons for employing a female worker was so that female patients felt more comfortable discussing personal health issues which they probably would not have done with Naz.