New Treatment Room now available at Tywyn Hospital
09 June, 2023
A new Treatment Room is now available at Tywyn Hospital that will provide an alternative way to access treatment and ease pressure on local services.
The Treatment Room is a service initiative created to work in conjunction with GP surgeries to offer patients a larger range of facilities in their local community.
The team of nursing staff who work at the unit provide all types of wound care, ranging from basic dressing changes, leg ulcers to compression bandaging.
Staff Nurse, Olwen Edwards, who has worked at the hospital for over 50 years, says she’s pleased to be part of a new service at the hospital.
She said: “It is fantastic that we can now offer this service for our local community. We have some great facilities here at Tywyn Hospital and we are really pleased we can utilise them.
“Some of our patients who we see would normally either be seen by the practice nurse or a district nurse but now they are able to be referred on to us and we carry out their follow ups.”
Shui Howard, Associate Nurse Practitioner, has also welcomed the new service and hopes it will evolve over time.
She said: “This is a great new service we have here at Tywyn and it also helps free up the time of the GP surgery and district nurses to let them prioritise their most urgent patients.
“We hope now that we have this service here we can develop it over time to offer more treatments.”
Olwen and Shui have both taken up their new roles since the temporary ward closure at the hospital in April 2023.
While the inpatient ward is temporarily closed and recruitment for new nurses continues, some of the Health Care Support Workers have undertaken additional training to develop their skills and competencies and are now supporting the Tuag Adref (Homeward Bound) service in Tywyn. The Tuag Adref service provides support to patients at home following their discharge from hospital and also provide additional support to help individuals remain at home by providing additional care and rehabilitation within the patients own home.
Ffion Johnstone, Integrated Health Community Director for Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board West, said: “We continue to actively recruit for new nursing staff so we are able to reopen our inpatient ward at Tywyn Hospital.
“We have launched a recruitment campaign across the county and further afield which we hope will attract new nurses to the area.
“We are pleased that we are now able to offer a Treatment Room service for our community in Tywyn and look forward to reopening our Minor Injury Unit this summer.
“We would like to thank our staff impacted by the temporary ward closure for supporting us to open a new service at the hospital and for those who are currently supporting our Tuag Adref service, which has allowed us to expand that service to support more people who need that extra support at home.”