Five Minutes With... Sommer Matthews
“They are not just patients; they are people with a past and a future and they always have a wonderful story to tell.”
BCHC has around 5,000 staff who are dedicated to delivering the best care they can to communities across Birmingham and the West Midlands.
With so many colleagues offering more than 100 different services, we will be spotlighting them once a month in a series of interviews that we call, Five Minutes With.
The interviews are a great way of getting to know a bit more about the people who make up Team BCHC and the services that we provide from birth to older years.
Our first edition of Five Minutes With features Sommer Matthews, Service Manager in our Adult Community Services division who looks after our Community Nursing teams in the West locality.
In the following interview, Sommer explains what first drew her to the nursing profession and what made her pursue a career in community nursing specifically.
Hi Sommer, can you tell us a little bit about your role at BCHC?
As a Service Manager in the Adult Community Services division looking after Community Nursing Teams in the West locality, it is my responsibility to look after operational elements for the teams. I like to think that anything to do with people (staff) and places (buildings) in the West locality sits with me.
I have worked at BCHC for eight years now, although I did start my community nursing career in South Birmingham Primary Care Trust over 20 years ago.
There are five teams in the West locality, Hawthorns, Perry View, Spring Hill, Trinity and West Unplanned. We have four Planned Care teams and one Unplanned Care team. There are approximately 100 staff in the locality delivering a nursing service to the most vulnerable patients in the area. We deliver care in a patient’s own home and/or in clinic settings. We work seven days a week come rain or shine (or snow).
Why is community care so important?
At BCHC, we offer a 24-hour service, 365 days of the year. We receive 3,400 new patient referrals every month and we make 71,000 patient visits each month and yet, many people do not know that we exist.
We deliver care to patients in their own home. Most of the people that we see are housebound, so they tend to be older members of the community, but this is not always the case. We see patients from 17 years and over.
The community nurses make planned and unplanned visits to support the patients in the community, delivering holistic care (and making a cuppa).
Why did you decide to pursue a career in your field specifically?
When I was a student nurse and when I first qualified and worked in a hospital setting, I knew that I wanted to work in the community. Nursing gives you an opportunity to be part of a patient’s chapter in their story and make a difference.
Community nursing means that you get to see the setting of the story and how that story ends. It is such a privilege to be invited into a patient’s home to deliver care when the patient is most in need. They are not just patients; they are people with a past and a future and they always have a wonderful story to tell. And I love it!
Has there ever been a stand-out moment in your career that has made you pause and reflect?
I would say the care that we delivered during COVID. It was very surreal and very frightening in the beginning, but I was so proud of my team and how we all pulled together to support each other during the tough times.
I received my Queen’s Nurse title after COVID as a result of the work I did for patients. My Queen’s Nurse ceremony took place on Zoom as we were not able to meet up during COVID.
I was also asked to speak on Radio 4 to talk about community nursing. I was very proud to be asked however, my mom said that wished that I had tried to hide my Brummie accent, and my children were embarrassed that I used the phrase ‘nurses bread and butter’ so I was brought back to earth with a bump! I have three teenagers, so they are embarrassed by me most of the time.
Tell us something that people might not know about you.
I was asked to take Wes Streeting out on visits to meet some patients along with our Chief Nurse, Lorraine Galligan. We visited lovely patients and we were able to provide a real insight into what we do every day to support patients in our community.
Describe yourself in three words.
Kind, hardworking, loud.