Innovation and digital nursing: providing continuity in stoma care to patients during the pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic impacted all NHS services and NHS staff. Unlike many other stoma and pouch care services, which limited their services during the pandemic, ours continued to provide uninterrupted care throughout by successfully streamlining continuous stoma and pouch services for all patients who needed operations or support in acute hospital settings and the community.

However, the beginning of the pandemic brought a lot of uncertainties and called for quick planning and the implementation of many changes in a very short period. Our service transformed into a fully digital service, implementing remote working, digital technologies, virtual clinics, digital patient information leaflets and the publication of a patient self-care handbook.

All this was necessary as our hospital base at the time became a major receiving centre for COVID-positive patients, and surgical patients were relocated to private hospitals to avoid delays in care. Therefore, for the next 2 years, our Stoma and Pouch Care Nursing Team was providing care across three or five hospitals at a time. Around a year into the pandemic it became even more challenging to provide uninterrupted care because we had to relocate to a different hospital for our base.