Tywyn Hospital has a new treatment room to provide an alternative way to access treatment and ease pressure on services.

The treatment room will work in conjunction with GP surgeries to offer patients a larger range of facilities in their local community.

Nursing staff at the unit will provide wound care, ranging from basic dressing changes, leg ulcers to compression bandaging.

Staff nurse Olwen Edwards, who has worked at the hospital for over 50 years, says she’s pleased to be part of this new service.

“It is fantastic that we can now offer this service for our local community. We have some great facilities here at Tywyn Hospital and we are really pleased we can utilise them,” she said.

“Some of our patients who we see would normally either be seen by the practice nurse or a district nurse but now they are able to be referred on to us and we carry out their follow ups.”

Associate nurse practitioner Shui Howard also welcomed the new service and hopes it will evolve.

She said: “This is a great new service we have here at Tywyn and it also helps free up the time of the GP surgery and district nurses to let them prioritise their most urgent patients. We hope now that we have this service here we can develop it over time to offer more treatments.”

Olwen and Shui have taken up their new roles since the temporary closure of the hospital’s inpatient ward in April. While recruitment for new nurses continues, some health care support workers have undertaken additional training to develop skills and competencies and are now supporting the Tuag Adref (Homeward Bound) service in Tywyn. The Tuag Adref service provides support to patients at home following their discharge from hospital and also provide additional support to help individuals remain at home by providing additional care and rehabilitation within the patients own home.

Ffion Johnstone, integrated health community director for Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board West, said: “We continue to actively recruit for new nursing staff to reopen our inpatient ward at Tywyn Hospital.

“We have launched a recruitment campaign across the county and further afield which we hope will attract new nurses to the area.

“We are pleased that we are now able to offer a treatment room service for our community in Tywyn and look forward to reopening our Minor Injury Unit this summer.

“We would like to thank our staff impacted by the temporary ward closure for supporting us to open a new service at the hospital and for those who are currently supporting our Tuag Adref service which has allowed us to expand that service to support more people who need that extra support at home.”