Community Night and Twilight Nursing Service
This section contains information about the community night and twilight nursing service provided by NHS Dorset.
East Dorset
Heather Smith
St Leonards Hospital Matron /
Community Services Manager (Out of Hours)
St Leonard’s Community Hospital
Nr Ringwood
BH24 2RR
We have had a Community Night and Twilight Nursing Service for many years in East Dorset and that Service is constantly changing and developing to meet the needs of the local population.
As part of your community nursing care you may be referred to the Community Night & Twilight Nursing Service.
This is a single Service, based at St Leonards Hospital near Ringwood. It serves all the GP practices in East Dorset, including Bournemouth and Poole, from 6pm until 7am every night of the year.
We have about 10 nurses on duty every evening, each one of them working in a single geographical area. For example, one trained nurse will cover Poole, another central Bournemouth, another Highcliffe etc. From midnight to 7am there are two nurses on duty covering the entire area.
Our Service has four main aspects of care:
- Referral for an on-going period of treatment.
- Urgent response nursing visits.
- Telephone advice and support to patients and carers.
- A night sitting service for short-term help to acutely and terminally ill patients.
We take referrals from other health care professionals. This may be your district nurse or your doctor or one of the local hospitals. We also work closely with Dorset and Somerset Urgent Care Service, who refer urgent, out of hours calls.
Once you have been referred to our Service you will be given our mobile telephone number to contact the Night Sister, who is available from 6pm to 7am every night. You can also use the same mobile number if you need a nurse at weekends or bank holidays when the GP surgery is closed.
Occasionally, we do have problems with network reception in some areas of the county. If you can’t get through, please wait for an hour then try again. If your need is very urgent please telephone the Urgent Care Service on 0845 600 10 13.
As you will appreciate, we are a small Service spread very thinly over a large area. We endeavour to visit all urgent calls within 2 hours of the call being made. We will advise you if that wait is extended.
If you wish to make any comment on the Service, please write to the address at the top of the page.