Hi everybody,
Hope summer is going well!
I have been working a lot and putting this to good use and gaining more experience in the learning disability field. It has been great to see other services where I am, both private and for the trust.
I wanted to do a post on 'what do learning disability nurses do?' I have received a few emails about this and I frequently find myself explaining this to people I meet who don't fully understand either.
So let me begin by directing you to a few websites that you may have already come across:
While these websites are very useful and do help to explain, it always helps to hear first hand of what a learning disability nurse does.
Our lecturers are learning disability nurses and their jobs are very varied from one person to the next. One of ours is a community LD nurse. They will travel from one individual's house to another, assisting with attending appointments, checking on their welfare, helping to administer medications, taking blood, checking their clinical observations; for example their blood pressure, weight, temperature. They will also liaise with other health care professionals by making appointments and referrals to those who may need it, such as physiotherapy.
Another lecturer will do a similar sort of role. However, they also attend many conferences, organise trips for students to visit, they visit old patients they met when they were a student, (!) write journal articles and do research and will also meet with the local government in relation to health needs and legislation etc for those with learning disabilities. They provide their input, but also act as an advocate for people with learning disabilities as well as their families and carers.
Of course, these individuals are also lecturers. So they support us as students, they help to grade our work. They provide advice and they teach us.
The role of a learning disability nurse is so varied it is hard to pin the description of what we will be able to do when we graduate to just one thing.
So what does a Learning Disability Nurse do?
Well, that is dependent on the area you work in and what your role is within that area, similar to the other branches of nursing.
However, as a Learning Disability Nurse, you are using the skills and knowledge you have gained throughout your time in university. Examples of this could be assessing your patients for their care needs and deciding if another health care professional needs to be involved. It can be assessing the person's health, monitoring their clinical observations. You could help to make their last moments of life more comfortable by administering medications (prescribing if you go on to do that course). You can be changing tracheostomies, inserting and changing PEG tubes, assessing airway needs and managing in recovery, the list goes on. Most of all, you are working in a holistic manner to ensure that the individual is able to communicate their needs and wants. You will be educating others to what your patients want and need. You will be educating them on what your role is and why people with Learning Disabilities deserve specialised care just as every other individual out there does. As I have stated in previous posts, someone with Cystic Fibrosis will have a respiratory nurse helping to care for them, someone with heart failure will have a cardiac nurse. Thus, a person with learning disabilities will have (or should have) a Learning Disability Nurse.
A learning disability nurse can work in such a variety of areas and roles. Once we graduate, we can work in;
- schools,
- prisons,
- acute mental health areas,
- theatres and recovery,
- the community,
- residential settings,
- care homes,
- day centres,
- neuro rehabilitation
- criminal justice
- macmillan
- assessment and treatment
- custody suite health service
- child development service
- children's hospice
- acquired brain injury
- rehabilitation
- challenging behaviour teams
- forensic care
And this is just to name a few!
The possibilities are endless when you are a nurse. As a Learning Disability Nurse however, you have so many doors open it could be hard to choose!
It is so difficult to give advice to those who cannot decide if they want to do learning disability nursing or not.
Personally, I think it is something that just becomes you. You may have never thought about it (I hadn't - I was wanting to become a teacher). Then, there may be that lightbulb moment and you may wonder why you had never thought of it sooner (mine was Camp America, a camp for those with special needs). Whatever you decide, remember that at the end of the course, you all graduate as nurses. That means we work together and we have one common goal - to ensure our patients are looked after and that we are doing the best we can for them.
As Learning Disability Nurses, we are able to work with people who are newborn, we can work with those people right up until their last moments of life. We are able to use our skills to be flexible and change to adapt to the individual and their care needs. It is an amazing thing to be a learning disability nurse. Not just because you are caring for them, but because you are able to provide that holistic care and be their advocate. You can ensure that your patients get the care they deserve. You will act as their voice, you will fight their corner, you will be proud of their achievements, but most of all, you will be their nurse.
And what could be better than that?
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