Abbott Nurse Advisor Service Also known as Abbott Nutrition

Updated 24 May 2017

Abbott Nutrition is a global healthcare company that specialises in the field of medical nutrition. Working with healthcare professionals, they provide structured nutritional care and support to achieve best practice and researched and evidenced outcomes for patients with specific nutritional requirements

As part of their commitment to NHS trusts they are contracted to support, they provide Abbott Nutrition’s homecare service, Hospital2Home. Hospital2Home’s aim is to ease the patient’s transition from hospital to their home. The support team includes an Abbott Nurse Advisor and a dedicated Hospital2Home Co-ordinator. NHS trusts contract the Abbott Nurses Advisor Service to provide enteral feeding care and support to their patients. Some trusts contracted ANAS to provide a service to a small number of children. Where the contract with the NHS trust included a service to children, registered children’s nurses were recruited to deliver the service.

Abbott Nurse Advisors (nurses) were not directly employed by the ANAS. All nursing staff were employed by an employment agency that was under contractual agreement to provide permanent nurse advisors to work for the ANAS.

The main objective of the service provided by the ANAS was to enable patients to self-manage their enteral feeding needs independently. This meant training and education of patients and their carers and family was a fundamental aspect of the nurses’ role. They ensured that the patient or carer is confident about their feeding regimen, offer the patient or their carer training on how to use the feeding equipment, arrange for the delivery of their feeding equipment and feed to their home at a time which suits the patient or carer, answer any queries they may have twenty four hours a day, and tailor the service depending on patient needs and in accordance with the contracted service.

Additionally, an expected outcome of the service the ANAS provided was preventing unnecessary or additional hospital admissions, keeping patients in their home environment and improving the quality of life and confidence of patients and their families.

Our regulation of the organisation covers only the Abbott Nurse Advisor Service. This service is regional teams of registered nurses who provide clinical support and advice for enterally fed patients registered on the Abbott Nutrition Hospital2Home Service.

Updated 24 May 2017

The Abbott Nurse Advisor Service acted to promote and protect the safety of patients, their family members, carers and staff. The service demonstrated patients were at the centre of their service delivery and developments.

Processes were followed to ensure equipment was available and safe to use for both staff and patients. The provider had assurance that staff employed had the skills, competencies and knowledge to carry out their role. Risks of abuse and neglect were mitigated by staff who had a good understanding about safeguarding both for vulnerable adults and children, and who knew the safeguarding procedures in the localities they worked in. The service showed it took action and learnt from incidents. This included incidents occurring outside the organisation, incidents relating to the delivery of patient care that the NHS trusts investigated and responding to national patient safety alerts. However, some nurses did not have a full understanding about the process for reporting and alerting contracting NHS trusts about incidents that involved the delivery of care and treatment by that NHS trust

The service demonstrated good outcomes for patients. The care and support provided prevented hospital visits and admissions, and enabled patients to independently care for and administer their enteral feeds. Multi-disciplinary teamwork with the local trust’s dietitians and nutrition nurses supported a cohesive, patient-centred dietary and enteral feeding service for patients.

Staff provided compassionate and friendly care to patients, treating them with respect and dignity. The aim of the service was to support patients to independently manage their own feeding tubes and administration of feeds. Training to achieve this was delivered at a pace and in the environment that best supported the patient’s individual needs.

Staff had a good understanding of the emotional impact and anxieties patients experienced. Mechanisms were in place for patients to access support and advise 24 hours a day.

There was an embedded strategy and vision for the service which staff demonstrated commitment to in their working practices. The service had effective systems and processes that were used to monitor and support improvements in the quality of the service and monitored risks and their associated mitigating actions. The service considered the views of patients in the development of the service.