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Meet Sarah, our professional lead acute liaison learning disability and autism #IND2023

To celebrate International Nurses Day 2023, Sarah Barnard, our professional lead acute liaison learning disability and autism tells us more about her role, what she enjoys about it, and how she has progressed throughout her nursing career.

"I am currently the professional lead acute liaison learning disability and autism for the trust, and I have been in post since November 2021. The role sits within the Safeguarding team.

We have worked closely with our anaesthetic colleagues to develop a pathway for people with a learning disability and/or autism who require GA for any investigations. 

Our role is to support people with learning disabilities and/or autism when accessing acute healthcare services across the trust as they may experience health inequalities and difficulties when accessing healthcare.

We ensure that reasonable adjustments are in place, which may include communication aids or easy read information and ensuring open visiting for family and carers is available.

We also provide training and awareness of learning disabilities and/or autism to wards and departments.

We are also in the process of rolling out the ‘grab bag’ across the Trust - a purple bag brought into hospitals by patients which includes anything that can make their hospital stay easier. This may include their hospital passport, any eating and drinking plans, anything they use to help keep them calm, and contact details of people who support them.

I first qualified as a learning disability nurse in 2005, coming to nursing later in life. Having previously worked as an Intelligence Analyst in the Royal Air Force for 7 ½ years, moving into a nursing career was a big career change for me. On qualifying as a nurse in 2005, I predominantly worked in the mental health field both in the community and on mental health inpatient wards before coming back to working with people with learning disabilities in my current role.

I feel extremely privileged to be in a role which enables me to support people with learning disabilities, difficulties and/or autism in being able to access appropriate healthcare. It can be challenging at times but it’s extremely rewarding.

I am now hopefully moving on to a new phase in my career and have started the ACP apprenticeship which will enable me to work alongside doctors in developing our services and providing good quality healthcare to this patient group.”