IT’S a wonderful time of year, but for the county’s emergency services, charities and organisations, Christmas can also be the busiest. This festive season, the Dorset Echo has been out and about with the people who keep the county going all year long. RACHEL STRETTON spends some time at Dorset County Hospital with the staff nursing patients back to health.

IF you are unlucky enough to find yourself in need of emergency surgery due to an accident or illness this Christmas, the chances are you will come under the care of Ann Bishop.

Arranging blood tests and x-rays, liaising with GPs, contacting consultants to get a surgical opinion and finding beds – at the same time as reassuring the patient and making the process run as smoothly as possible – is all in a day’s work.

Ann is the only emergency surgical nurse practitioner at Dorset County Hospital, although there is an equivalent role on the medical side of things and a new emergency admissions unit is expected to open soon.

“There is no typical day in my job,” she said, and as soon as we sit down to start the interview, her pager beeps and she is off.

A man has been admitted after seeing his GP with abdominal pains. With a newly qualified doctor alongside her, she takes a verbal history from the patient, 69-year-old Terry Cousins, then does an examination.

After that it’s time to arrange appropriate tests, which will be discussed with a senior doctor, usually a registrar or consultant.

“The first thing you do is ask them for the story,” Ann said. “They may have come in from a GP surgery, like in this case, or been brought in by an ambulance or by themselves.

“You usually get a good percentage of diagnoses from what the patient is telling you, then an examination is done to firm up your suspicions.

“It’s a bit like being a detective in some ways.”

Ann’s experience – and her self-confessed ‘bossiness’ – means she is able to call on a huge pool of experienced staff within the hospital to make sure everything gets done as quickly as possible.

“The most important thing is to make sure the patient is stable,” she explained. “Obviously when I get that call and someone comes in, I don’t know what to expect. If it’s serious then the whole process has to be sped up.”

Targets must also be met to ensure people are not waiting too long in the accident and emergency department, or for test results. Ann must also work to ensure people are not admitted as in-patients unnecessarily.

“One of my roles is to reduce inappropriate admissions,” she said. “Patients are better off at home in many circumstances. Although some people think they need to be in hospital to be looked after, that is not the case.

“There are a lot of innovative new schemes, such as hospital at home, and I work closely with those teams and the district nurses which deliver those services.”

With test results sent off, Mr Cousins is waiting to hear if he will need to be admitted, although he is happy he is in the safest of hands.

“Ann is very kind and has really made me feel at home,” he said.

“It was a little unexpected that I ended up in hospital as I went to the medical centre with stomach pains this morning and the doctor told me I had to come here.

“It’s just a case of waiting to see what happens.”

With a spare five minutes, Ann heads off to the ward to check on her patients who were admitted the day before, including John Laramy.

“You never know what to expect each day,” she said. “If it’s busy, it tends to start at around 9am when the doctors’ surgeries open. It can be like this where the phone never stops ringing.

“Or I could have a relatively quiet day with time to catch up on paperwork and focus on other projects. There’s a saying that ‘people plan and God laughs’, but the not knowing is just part of the job, and I have to say I love it.”

Ann's personal fight to stop disease killing thousands each year

ON her quieter days, Ann has time to work on other projects, such as managing sepsis – a cause close to her heart.

Sepsis occurs when the body’s response to infection injures its own tissues and organs.

It can often be mistaken for flu or gastroenteritis, but has serious, sometimes fatal consequences.

Ann, who has been at the forefront of the hospital’s drive to raise awareness of the condition, spoke about how her own daughter had been affected.

“When my daughter was 19 she woke up one morning with muscle pains. She went on to develop every single symptom of sepsis and I took her to hospital.

“We were very lucky she got treatment in time. The doctor took all the right steps, she was kept in overnight and given fluids and antibiotics.

“Unfortunately it was then assumed she had a urinary tract infection. If she hadn’t have had the blood cultures done, which is what led to the diagnosis of sepsis, it would have been missed. The result would have been catastrophic.”

Ann said that enough people to fill a Premiership football club ground – around 37,000 people – die from sepsis in the UK every year.

She is working to increase screening and educate doctors, nurses and the public, and hopes to set up a group for sepsis survivors and relatives of those who have been affected.

Symptoms can include slurred speech, extreme shivering or muscle pain, severe breathlessness and mottled or discoloured skin.

Visit sepsistrust.org for details.

Ann began working at Dorset County Hospital in August 2012 after moving to the area from the north east of England. She came to the hospital on a temporary basis, working in the pre-assessment unit, and took up her current role as emergency surgical nurse practitioner in December last year. Ann began training at Hartlepool school of nursing in 1990, qualifying in 1994.

She gained her degree as a nurse practitioner from Teesside University in 2010 and studied there at Masters level before moving to Dorset.