Specialist epilepsy nurses ‘invaluable to NHS’

Epilepsy specialist nurses (ESNs) with one-to-one personal contact with patients and specialised skills are invaluable to the NHS, it has been claimed.

The Joint Epilepsy Council has said moves to cut the number of specialised nurses or return them to general wards would reflect a temporary attitude to cost-reduction, as such moves do not take into account the decrease in admissions to emergency wards as a result of the work of these nurses.

Sharon Harvey, general secretary of the Joint Epilepsy Council, said: “It is the PCTs [Primary Care Trusts] and Strategic Health Authorities who are looking for short-term cost cutting measures and not possibly looking at the overall picture and seeing how much money having specialists actually saves in the long run.”

She added that ESNs provide vital support to epilepsy patients in assisting them to live with their condition.

Epilepsy Action, a member-led epilepsy organisation in Britain, recently called on the government to address the falling numbers of ESNs in the UK, while it described the existing number of nurses as “already insufficient”.

The group said that it was “vital” for the number of ESNs to be maintained to help patients with epilepsy remain in the community and live independently.