Celebrating International Nurses Day: Meet safeguarding nurse Debbie Twist
As part of our International Nurses Day celebrations, we spoke to Debbie Twist who is one of our safeguarding nurses. She told us about her 10 year history with North Mid, shared her experiences of the pandemic and talks about her desire for safeguarding to go 'back to basics'.
Tell us about your role and your history with North Mid
My name is Debbie Twist and I’m currently the safeguarding nurse for children. I started as a general nurse and then took up a paediatric role as a children’s community nurse, and whilst I was there I always found the safeguarding element of cases rewardable. I’ve been in this role for 7+ years now and no day is the same which is what makes it enjoyable. I take pride in my job, and despite safeguarding being a challenging role I do enjoy that we’re able to do it right for the children and the parents.
It’s also great to be able to work with staff in a different way and support them. Sometimes it’s quite sad to listen to the stories of the children or families and so we support staff to be able to manage that - you don’t want people to take it home and worry about it, you want people to know that we’re here. But that’s how we do it at North Mid - it’s that team and family approach to everything! I’ve been here 10 years now and North Mid is my home.
How has the pandemic impacted your role?
We were supporting our community colleagues such as police and social care as it was incredibly busy for them after the first lockdown. For example when the children went back to school last September and they were back with a teacher that they felt comfortable sharing with, things were being disclosed out in the community and so they had a lot more referrals.
It also made us think about how we were working with other hospitals and ensuring that all information was communicated. The majority of paederaitics were redelopyed with the children going to Great Ormond Street so it was important to ensure we kept those links.
The use of technology and applications such a MS Teams definitely helped us as we were able to set up meetings quicker and discuss cases in a more efficient way, but there were also challenges. We had to think about the families in this new virtual world and having to think differently about how you spoke as they wouldn’t be able to read your body language.
What do you hope for the future of safeguarding?
In an ideal world, I’d love to see it going back to how it used to be - services have been cut nationally over many years and whilst we know people are vulnerable, there’s a lot of hidden vulnerability as well. For example care of the elderly where people have come in neglected as carers haven’t visited and the families haven’t visited so no one has been informed.
The old-fashioned way is the ideal and helping people in the early years, because if you do that right then issues like youth violence would hopefully improve, and then they would go on to be better parents and it would be a domino effect of a healthier and better life for all.
What do you like to do on a day off?
Walking my dogs! Also we bought a new camper van just before lockdown and we’re desperate to go away in that.
If you were stranded on a desert island what one item would you take?
If I could look after it then an animal - my dog Spot would be great!