Acute Demand service ‘reassuring’ for patients
David Ahlfeld and his wife Pamela.
After spending five nights in hospital with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), 75-year-old David Ahlfeld couldn’t wait to return home.
If it wasn’t for the Acute Demand Community Nursing service, he believes he would have been in hospital for several more nights.
David was able to be treated at home by the Acute Demand team for five days after being discharged from Christchurch Hospital.
“While the hospital team were brilliant, it’s always better to be at home,” he says. “With Acute Demand, you get a more personal service. The nurses were great. They told me about the service and answered all my questions.”
His wife, Pamela, says she found the service “very reassuring”. “It was so much easier to have all the tests done at home at the same time. We knew we could call the nurses if we were worried about anything,” she says.
It was David’s first experience with the Acute Demand service.
A heavy smoker from 16 to 60, he was diagnosed with COPD about five years ago. Annual tests revealed the condition was worsening, but David was able to manage with medication and rest.
In April 2016, he and Pamela were in Australia visiting their daughter when David’s COPD flared up. “I took my medications for three days there and I thought I was getting better. The day after we got home, I walked from the bedroom to the lounge and I just couldn’t get my breath. I struggled for about 20 minutes before it eased off.”
The next day, Pamela called a nurse at their General Practice for advice and was told that David should see his doctor. After a visit to his GP for advice, David was transferred to hospital.
After being discharged from hospital after five nights, nurses from the Acute Demand team visited his home daily.
“I was very impressed,” David says. “It’s the first time I’ve used the service and it gave us a lot of confidence.”
David was one of 3017 people who, in the 2015-16 year, were treated by the Acute Demand service, which manages complex medical issues in community settings. The Nursing team, supported by a Medical Director and Senior Medical Officer, observes and treats conditions such as skin infections, rehydration, asthma, pneumonia, Deep Vein Thrombosis, COPD and heart failure.