Nursing Home Staff Now Vaccinating Residents Across Lancashire and South Cumbria
An innovative programme, pioneered by NHS Lancashire and South Cumbria ICB, empowers care home nurses to administer vital COVID-19 and flu vaccinations.
By Megan Worthington
••2 min read
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Generic image of a nurse administering a vaccination to a resident in a care home setting.
NHS Lancashire and South Cumbria Integrated Care Board has become the first in the UK to empower nursing home staff to administer vaccinations to their own residents, following a successful pilot.
The innovative vaccination programme, initially trialled during the COVID-19 pandemic in Barrow-in-Furness, involved nursing home nurses delivering COVID-19 and flu vaccinations to care home residents and staff. This model, now rolled out across Lancashire and South Cumbria on an opt-in basis, builds on lessons learned from the COVID-19 vaccination effort.
This new approach allows trained nursing home nurses to vaccinate residents and staff directly. Benefits include improved vaccination timeliness, enhanced patient experience, increased workforce capability, and freed-up primary care capacity. The initiative is gaining national attention, with other ICB areas looking to adapt the model.
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"Care home residents are among the most clinically vulnerable members of our society so protecting them from illness is a priority. Identifying that we have a skilled nursing workforce in this sector and recognising that they are best placed to vaccinate residents means that this new approach not only ensures residents feel more comfortable and safe being given a vaccination by someone they know, but it also frees up vital NHS resource by taking some of the burden off GP practices and Primary Care Networks. We were so impressed with how the pilot went and the feedback we received that it then gave us the opportunity to roll this new way of working out across the patch."
Lancashire and South Cumbria has a total of 134 care homes with 6,546 nursing beds. Previously, primary care services delivered vaccinations in nursing homes, but feedback highlighted challenges in providing timely vaccinations, especially for residents with complex needs, including dementia.
Under the new model, nursing homes act as commissioned vaccination providers, receiving appropriate training, access to vaccination recording systems, and governance support. Vaccinations are administered within the nursing home setting, reducing reliance on external providers and supporting peer-to-peer staff vaccination.
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"The amount of nursing homes that have opted in to this new way of working speaks volumes in how successful this new approach has been. I’m very proud of this piece of work and the team that have helped implement it, also of the staff in the nursing homes who have trusted us to work with them and support them with a new skill set that they have embraced."
