The MS Specialist Nurse team in Greater Manchester are planning to change the way that we offer our services from March 1st 2025. The aim is for us to provide support and care ‘as needed’, which we hope will make a positive impact to everyone with MS in the area. This change is, in part, because we will be short staffed in 2025 and need to ensure that everybody receives the support required until we are a full team again in 2026.
What is staying the same?
All people with MS in Greater Manchester will have access to an MS nurse. For the majority of people this will be the same nurse, but we will need to cross cover.
The MS nurses will each have a face-to-face clinic one day per week which will be for us to see newly diagnosed patients and people who need an urgent face to face appointment.
- The MS nurses will continue to provide home visits to people who have complex needs and cannot attend an appointment face to face.
- The telephone helpline will be available and is monitored Monday- Friday 9-5pm (excluding bank holidays.)
What is changing?
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Regular telephone clinics are stopping.
During the pandemic we introduced regular telephone clinics to check in with patients as best we could. Whilst this had a positive impact for both the nurses and the patients at the time – it was not appropriate for everyone. Therefore, all scheduled clinic telephone appointments with the MS nurses will be cancelled from Friday 28th March 2025. We may also need to cancel a small number of face to face appointments, but we will communicate these directly closer to the time.
We believe that it would be more appropriate to have faster access to MS Nurses when you have problems that need addressing, rather than a regular review.
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A new email address will be created.
This will be for patients to raise queries directly to us. This is designed to work in conjunction with the existing helpline number and gives us both the benefit of having direct contact in writing. We feel as though it will enable patients to share more clearly their issues with us and will allow for us to share information back and forth with you in a much better way than before.
What do we need to do?
If you have been diagnosed with MS since 2018 you are eligible to join the GMMSIN private Facebook group and study where you can access support from MS nurses and other people living with MS
