British-trained nurses for local care
Health care service in Sri Lanka will get a boost with the setting up of a home English Nursing Care Service to provide quality care service to the needy and to invalids. The English Nursing Care Service is a registered nurse supervised home nursing service located at Colombo 10.
Richard Gould , Director , English Nursing Care Services told reporters at a media briefing held at the Wesminster House in Colombo 7 recently that English Nursing Care Services will set a new standard in high quality, compassionate nursing care in Sri Lanka. “We want to offer our patients a professionally managed, reliable nursing service in their own home. Our nurse supervised service will provide eldercare as well as other specilaist nursing services for those suffering from long term conditions.”
He said that he was delighted in launching the nursing service to provide care to the needy with English and Sri Lankan expertise staff. “We are all unfortunately getting older and advances in medicine in the developing and developed world is pushing back frontiers of mortality. For people living longer the key question is how can we promote good quality of life for our citizens.”
He said medical technology needs ever increasing investments and an efficient delivery system. All these factors create a need for high quality reliable and compasionate home nursing. Advances in medicine mean that people are living longer, but require nursing care to maintain their quality of life.
Educational opportunities and careers around the world mean that families are not able to care for elders as easily as in the past. He said the company is a subsidiary company from the UK that will bring expertise from the UK to develop the community nursing care sector in Sri Lanka. Refering to his career, Mr. Gould said that he was an army officer and started paediatric nursing and health care business 20 years ago in the UK. “It continued as a successful business today and since then it had supported thousands of clients.” He said two years ago he visited Sri Lanka together with his wife on an exploratory trip on further developing home nursing concept and was struck by the beauty of the island and the warmth of its people with traditional values.
“Sri Lanka sits on a strategic location of South Asia and is an island nation like ours. Our home nursing model has been adopted to Sri Lanka. What we have done was in using the best in UK practice care and community nursing care such as safe handling care and medication compliance and record keeping and incorporating that to excellent Sri Lankan nursing skills. Our service will be supervised to a level not seen before and will be overseen by a Consultative Physician.Our services comprise nursing eldercare at homes of clients and specialist nursing care,” he added.
British High Commissioner to Sri Lanka James Dauris said health issues always bring UK and Sri Lanka together. “I have often met Sri Lankan doctors who had gone to the UK for postgraduate medical training at UK hospitals.” He said health is an important link that goes back several years between the two countries for many people on a personal level. Referring to UK’s reputation on an excellent health sector, he said he was proud of UK’s public and private health sectors.
“UK is a global leader where five of the world’s top 10 universities are found.” He said the UK now uses digital services to manage chronic illnesses.
Ms. Fiona Eccles Director Nursing, English Nursing Care services said that she was a registered nurse for 35 years who had been in the British Army and trained in London and abroad. She said after leaving the army she had worked at various hospitals and during the past 15 years had managed nursing care homes. “Nursing care provides personnel centred home care services supervised by nurses. We also provide wound care and diabetics care to patients. We also provide specialised services on long term and short term to patients leaving hospitals after operations.”
General Manager English Nursing Care Services Ivanka Fonseka also spoke.