QuDoS success is “weight in the arsenal” of an MS nurse with big plans for the future of her service.

Lindsay Lord, Advanced MS Champion (AMSC) at Salford Royal Hospital, said she was “absolutely bowled over” when she took a Judges Special Award at the recognition event in November.

“I am so pleased that the role has received this recognition,” said Lindsay, who was the first of six people in the UK to be employed under the MS Trust’s AMSC programme.

“It is not a QuDoS award just for me, it is for my colleagues, my patients and everyone at the MS Trust – because everything we do is a joint effort.”

Champion effort

The AMSC programme was designed to respond to an inequity of services between people on disease modifying drugs (DMDs) and those living with advanced disease.

Lindsay and her fellow champions work exclusively with people with complex needs, visiting them in their homes and linking with other services to co-ordinate care.

The charity has agreed to 90 per cent fund the roles in areas of high need for the first 15 months, on the understanding that the targeted healthcare trusts would employ their champions once their worth has been proved.

Daily rewards

Lindsay, who has been an MS nurse for more than a decade, described the job she has been doing since April as “extremely rewarding”.

“There is a whole group of people who were diagnosed before disease modifying therapies became available and essentially this meant that their care became managed by the GP rather than neurology services. The aim of this role is, in part, to try to correct that,” she said.

“I am seeing people who have never seen an MS nurse before. They have had MS for many years, have accrued significant disabilities, have multiple unpleasant symptoms and yet have not been seen by neurology services.”

Patients may be referred to Lindsay by the wider MS teams, GPs or other services, but they all have one thing in common – they are living with a mix of symptoms and complex needs.

“Invariably, there is something you can do to improve their quality of life,” she said.

A large part of the role is liaising with other services, whether they be provided by healthcare trusts, social services, hospices or charities, to ensure people get the support they need.

Lindsay gave the example of working with a lady in her 70s, who had been confined to a bed in her front room for “many years”, to access a specially adapted wheelchair and a battery power pack.

Lindsay said: “The specially adapted wheelchair was sourced from wheelchair services and we asked a charity to fund the battery pack so her elderly husband could take her out for fresh air and new scenery.

“Come the summer, it will be life changing for this couple, just to be able to get out of that room and go out of the house. It’s not always about treating spasticity and pain, it’s about quality of life.”

Demonstrating value, building the team

November was a good month for Lindsay, who discovered her role had been taken on permanently by Salford Royal just a week before her work was recognised at QuDoS.

Welcoming the news, Lindsay explained that she, with the backing of the MS Trust, had been able to prove that her work was making a difference.

“That’s the key – demonstrating value and the benefits of the role,” she said, explaining that she kept a database of interventions and outcomes in order to justify her position and prove that it was cost-effective.

Her next big project, she added, was analysing the causes of A&E admissions in people with MS and using that information to improve pathways.

If the data bears out her suspicion – that her interventions could help avoid costly, preventable admissions – she hopes to be able to use data to develop the role further.

“I cover the whole of Greater Manchester which is a huge area. It would be lovely to become a team of advanced MS professionals, a multidisciplinary team for people with advanced MS,” she said.

“To do this, I need to continue keeping records, collecting data and working towards business cases to move forward.”

QuDoS as fuel for the future

She has a lot of work ahead of her if she is to achieve her goal, but QuDoS recognition will help, Lindsay believes.

“From a personal perspective, it really fires you up and gives you that boost to work harder. It also helps to demonstrate the value and benefit of the role – it’s also kudos for your organisation that an employee has won a prestigious award”