Hello! I am Laura Walker, and I am delighted to be able to write this guest blog to talk about my role which includes leading a new team at East Lancashire Hospitals, designed to support those in acute in-patient settings to stop smoking.
I’ve been at ELHT for two years as the lead for the Alcohol Care Team, which, like smoking has a major impact on general health and the quality of life in our communities.
As you would expect, I’m really passionate about helping people struggling with addiction and health inequalities. This is something that we all contribute to with the help of our amazing community services and partners. Ultimately, teams across all ELHT services and settings can help to identify those who use tobacco or using alcohol at levels above the recommended maximum of 14 units per week. I know everyone is on board with this idea as we aim to improve people’s well-being and the need for hospital care and treatment.
Asking people about their alcohol and tobacco use is something that is everybody’s business at the Trust and if you’re a patient or the family of someone who drinks above recommended levels or smokes, please do expect questions to be asked that help us ensure support is in place, particularly whilst in one of our hospitals so that we can provide safe, personal and effective care.
East Lancashire – and especially the towns of Burnley and Blackburn – fall within the top 10 most deprived of areas of the country and there are strong links between addiction, deprivation and how these then go onto affect wider elements of the general health of local people.
I am passionate about this area of work – where I believe we can make real differences to people’s lives – big or small and I take the opportunity to talk about both the Alcohol Care team and the new tobacco reduction workstream whenever I can.
Addiction is a field I was drawn into more than 25 years ago and I know it can happen to anyone, touching and impacting on so many families, whether that involves losing a grandparent to smoking or seeing a loved one struggling with their alcohol use.
Identifying alcohol and tobacco use early through screening, and offering advice and treatment can help protect those who smoke and use alcohol at increased risk, higher risk and dependent levels from illness that can be prevented and avoided. In turn, this helps to reduce the number of people who need to be admitted into hospital and generally improve health outcomes in our communities. If we can prevent this, we’ll help people lead healthier lives for longer and this aim is part of the national goal for the UK to be smoke-free by 2030.
Just giving brief advice about smoking and drinking helps one in eight people make a change and, as healthcare professionals, we are in an ideal position to reduce stigma of talking about substance use and to ‘make every contact count’.
To achieve better outcomes there are a few key things for me; for tobacco we need everyone to get on board with the 'act, advise, act' approach, which put simply means:
• ‘Asking’ and recording if people smoke
• ‘Advising’ and supporting them on the best way to quit, whether this is through medication or specialist support
• ‘Acting’ on the response - ensuring nicotine replacement therapy is offered and referring to us as the tobacco team and we can help to keep inpatients safer and more comfortable during their stay on one of our wards.
For alcohol, it is about screening and delivering simple messages of the benefits of cutting down, and also in making sure those who drink to dependent levels who return home before detoxification continue to drink enough to control withdrawal until specialist help can be received to ensure they are not harmed through Alcohol withdrawal.
Addiction touches so many families, I included, whether that be losing a grandparent to smoking or seeing a loved one struggling with alcohol use, there is support out there.
Just giving brief advice about smoking and drinking helps one in eight people make a change as healthcare professionals we are in an ideal position to reduce stigma of talking about substance use and to ‘make every contact count’.
I always take the opportunity to talk about the Alcohol Care team. Addiction is a field I was drawn into more than 25 years ago.
I am both pleased and proud that ELHT is continually improving its focus on this area and having the opportunity to design a service has been a privilege for me.
As part of this the team had the opportunity to meet the CEO of NHS England Amanda Pritchard last year and have since been invited to sit on the national ‘Alcohol Care Team Innovation and Optimisation Network’ steering group to shape the work on a much bigger scale.
This is such a great achievement for such a tiny but amazing team who have delivered so much good work and intervention for our patients. The feedback from them and the joint working with colleagues from across the wider health and social care system has been so welcoming.
Of course, it’s not all perfect and we have faced so many challenges, mainly because of being a small specialist team. I want to say how hard working the team are, whilst referrals are increasing they have managed to accept every one whilst we have been running on 50% of the staff whilst we recruit. I am really proud of the diligence and care. I have also needed to spend more time clinically and I still feel the immense satisfaction I did way back as a student in helping vulnerable people to start making changes that matter.
In acute trusts, we usually see people who are very unwell and so it has been great to have Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) attending to demonstrate to others that recovery is possible and there really is a whole world doing well out there!
We are also very much looking forward to welcoming people with lived experience joining our team soon. Having worked in community services previously I have been fortunate to work alongside those ’walking the walk’ and this can only enrich the patient experience.
For colleagues, we are working on an e-learning package which will be widely available once approved but if anyone would like training in the meantime, please contact me or if you would like to join any of the alcohol and tobacco steering groups it would be good to see you!
For anyone else reading this from outside of the Trust, who feels they might need help for themselves or someone they know, please know there is support out there.
Whilst our alcohol and tobacco teams primarily support in-patients, we are always happy to point people in the right direction of where to get help in any circumstances. You can contact us on elht.alcoholcareteam.nhs.net
For community referral contacts: East Lancs Inspire: https://inspirelancs.org.uk/east-lancs/
Blackburn with Darwen - SPARK: https://sparkbwd.org.uk/
AA: https://www.alcoholics-anonymous.org.uk/
Red Rose Recovery – Lancashire: https://redroserecovery.org.uk/
Thanks for listening!