'Parish nursing enables me to be creative in fulfilling my role as a nurse'

Anne Stead has been a Parish Nurse at Mosaic Church in Hull for five years. She explains more about what the role entails 

Anne’s journey into parish nursing began when a church leader tasked her with finding out about the ministry. Anne began by visiting a busy Parish Nurse in Hull and, inspired by what she saw began working with her own church to develop a Parish Nursing service.

A key area of Anne's role is health promotion and health education to promote disease prevention or management. One example is providing blood pressure monitoring while also providing a listening ear. This gives people the space to talk about their health concerns. When talking to service users Anne takes the time to build their self-esteem and confidence as she believes this is key to encouraging people to make positive lifestyle choices. Parish Nursing allows her the time to be with people and to build trusting relationships which results in individuals being happy to ask her for help, support, and information when they need it most.

Anne explains, 'The overarching thing that Parish Nursing enables me to do is be creative in fulfilling my role as a nurse. I get a lot of satisfaction from helping people in understanding why and how.

'Parish Nursing gives me the time to sit and explain to the person, perhaps about their biology, so giving them the language to explain to the GP or nurse about what is happening to them.'

Unlike any other form of nursing, spiritual care is one of the unique selling points of Parish Nursing. Anne describes it like this, 'I like to think spiritual care runs through everything that I do. I think, in nursing, spiritual care is broader than whether you have faith or not. It’s about helping people to find meaning and purpose in life. Improving people’s self-esteem and feelings of self-worth, helping people to find ways to express themselves.'

Anne has been able to identify trends that are happening in her community through the work she does. She identified that many people found it difficult to open up about their concerns. As a result, Anne was able to adapt her service to incorporate new ideas such as craft activities alongside the church drop in coffee mornings and her clinic. Anne states this 'enabled a different level of conversation', and she finds that spiritual care runs through all the activities she offers.

Anne provides a listening ear, extra support, and signposting to informal carers as part of her role. She takes the time to build and maintain relationships with service users who have complex health needs and ensures people are given individualised support.

She understands the importance of this after spending a large part of her career working in hospices.

'It’s not always the big things that people want solving,' sometimes the smaller things, that get overlooked can make a big difference to their wellbeing and that’s something I enjoy doing.'


 

The story was supplied by Dawn Stephens, one of the Regional Nurse Coordinators for Parish Nursing

If you would like to find out more about parish nursing and how it can work for your church and community, contact enquiries@parishnursing.org.uk