Dr Tehmeena Khan, acute medicine consultant

Dr Tehmeena Khan is the consultant for UCLH@Home. This is a new role to support our virtual ward services, which allow suitable patients to be discharged from hospital with nurses visiting them at home.

What does your role involve on a day-to-day basis?

My role is to provide clinical oversight and support to nursing staff who visit and treat patients in their own homes.

In the mornings, I typically review our patient lists in the Acute Medical Unit (AMU) and those admitted to the Same Day Emergency Care (SDEC) unit to see if any patients are suitable to be treated via UCLH@Home. I then support our team to discuss this option with patients and ask for consent – we recognise it’s quite a personal thing having a group of people come into your home!

I’m then available should the nurses need to contact me; if there’s anything they’re concerned about when they’ve been to a patient’s home, or if a patient has contacted them outside visit times and they’re worried. In many cases, such as queries about medication, we can resolve this on the phone.

For some patients, the hospital might not be the right environment. For example, if someone’s got a history of dementia, or if they’re frail, being in hospital away from their family and familiar surroundings might make them more confused and agitated. If we can provide the care that we can give them in the hospital, but in their own homes, that may be safer for that patient. There is so much that we can do in the home, from diuretics to blood tests.

We can also continuously monitor patients remotely via special devices which trace heart rate, respiratory rate, oxygen saturation etc.

What skills are important for this role?

Communication skills are very important because the team needs to know that I’m there if they need any advice.

You must also have broad clinical knowledge and skills to assess patients remotely based on their test results and observations, and to provide clinical advice for a patient that you can’t physically see.

What are you most looking forward to achieving in this role?

There’s so much potential for this service. Six months ago, we were only getting five referrals a month but now we get up to five a week. While I provide clinical oversight, the nurses do a fantastic job because they also have a lot of responsibility. They’re going into people’s homes and making their own judgement calls.

We have a strong network, however, and are supported by colleagues both remote and in the hospital.

I look forward to us all continuing to work closely together and seeing the service develop and support more patients.