Primary care and screening liaison nurses
Find out more about our primary care liaison nurses and screening liaison nurses below. Both these services are for adults with learning disabilities.
Primary care liaison nurses
What is primary care?
Primary care is the first point of contact for health care unless it is an emergency. It is mainly provided by GPs (general practitioners), but community pharmacists, opticians and dentists are also primary health care providers.
What does the primary care liaison nurse team do?
We are a team of nurses who work alongside primary care providers and community hospitals. Our aim is to improve the professionals understanding of how to meet the health needs of people with a learning disability and to enable those, with a learning disability, to get the best from primary care before being referred on to specialist services if needed.
We do this by:
- checking GP registers to make sure those with a learning disability are recognised within the practice, so their needs can be met, and reasonable adjustments can be made, for example a double appointment time
- working closely with GP surgeries to improve the uptake and quality of the learning disability annual health checks
- providing support to individuals, their carers and support staff to those who may have difficulties attending or accessing services
- offering general and bespoke training to primary care staff, advice and signposting to other services and encouraging the use of effective communication including easy read material
Each nurse is based in a different area. Contact your local nurse for more information.
Contact the Primary Care Liaison Nurse Team
- North and east: call 07767 371 426.
- Mid: call 07717 586 762.
- West: call 07500 443 321.
Email the Primary Care Liaison Adults Learning Disabilities Team
Screening liaison nurses
We have 3 screening liaison nurses who work with the NHS adult screening programmes. These include the programmes below:
- abdominal aortic aneurysm
- bowel cancer
- breast cancer
- cervical cancer
- diabetic retinopathy
They work closely with the screening staff to identify people with learning disabilities so that they can be sent information in an easy-to-understand format and put reasonable adjustments in place when needed.
The screening liaison nurses work closely with GPs and other healthcare staff to support people with learning disabilities when they are invited to participate in screening. They support people with a learning disability to understand why screening is important and what to expect at a screening appointment.
Contact the Screening liaison nurses
For patients with a GP surgery with a:
- PL postcode, call 07385 349 392.
- PL and/or TR postcode, call 07717 586 043.
- TR postcode, call 07799 658 446.
Email the Screening Liaison Adults Learning Disabilities Team