As we look ahead to brighter days in our recovery from Covid-19, we are continuing to restart many of our services, including planned surgeries at King George Hospital.

To compliment this service, three advanced care practitioners (ACPs) have joined the team to treat, assess, examine and prescribe to our patients.

ACPs are highly trained health professionals, such as nurses, paramedics and physios, who have undertaken additional training to develop advanced clinical skills.

Many tasks usually undertaken by a doctor can also be completed by ACPs. These include keeping our patients informed and providing patient-focused care, which improves their experience while in our hospitals.

ACPs also bridge gaps between patients and our multi-disciplinary team (MDT), which is a team made up of many professions including nurses, physios, doctors and pharmacists.

One of our ACPs is Steven Moore, who joined our Trust in January.  He said: “It feels good to be welcoming patients back to King George Hospital for surgery. We have a number of measures in place to keep our patients, visitors and staff safe, including our designated green, Covid-protected zone wards and operating theatres.

“I am part of a great team, including my colleague Joanne Oliver, who joined me at King George Hospital at the same time, and Jincy Cherian who recently joined us in April. We hope to help in providing consistent care and develop pathways which will improve the patient experience. As ACPs, we also want to support junior nurses and doctors and help them learn by being one of the consistent members of the surgical team.

“ACPs are already well established as part of the surgical team at Queen’s Hospital, so it feels great to replicate this at King George Hospital as we focus on getting back to business.”