Medical Knowledge

Jacky is a former Intensive Care nurse who has enjoyed a long and exciting career in acute medicine and surgery, which has taken her around the country and the world. She has advanced clinical skills and a deep knowledge of disease development, which she imparts to enhance the common skill set amongst the staff of Compton View. In 2015 she won ITU Nurse of the Year, a national title given not only for her dedication to relieving human suffering, but in recognition of her warmth and friendliness, bringing comfort to those in distress. Her main interest during her later years in the Intensive Care Setting was developing an End of Life programme that was dignified and peaceful as part of her work with Transplant teams. She brings these unusual skills to Compton View with an unsurpassed level of outstanding compassion and care to those in the last days of their lives.

She is joined by Sandi Vokes, a retired nurse with a lifetime of clinical expertise in the orthopaedic speciality. As part of a military family she brings an unmistakeable efficiency and an eagle eye for the smallest detail. As a Supervisor on the floor, she is constantly on hand to explain, teach and share the benefits of her knowledge with more junior staff. Under the tutelage of these two nurses, our staff learn not only to take and record blood pressure, temperature and pulse rates, but to understand what they mean. Our staff can recognise an irregular heartbeat and know the safe ranges of all the vital signs. They can accurately perform and interpret a urinalysis and most recently we have added oxygen saturation measurements to our skillset. All our staff are fully trained to use the oximeter to build a valuable picture of a developing infection in those vital early hours.

We have the highest number of emergency first aid trained staff on our workforce and all our staff are trained in basic life support, including the use of a defibrillator if that were to be necessary.

Most importantly, we have had two cases of life threatening Sepsis in the last 24 months and both of those cases were spotted by different junior members of staff who escalated concerns, resulting in those residents being transferred to hospital within 30 minutes. Both residents’ survived.