HEALTHCARE support worker Natalie Rowles is on a mission - raising awareness, and banishing misconceptions, of the key role she and a growing army of colleagues perform on the NHS frontline.

Increasingly, healthcare support workers, or HCSWs, are responsible for helping deliver “continuing healthcare” packages to people with often complex needs, in their own homes.

Work involves giving medication, feeding through stomach and nasogastric tubes, catheter maintenance, and oxygen therapy.

Though trained through a different route, HCSWs acquire many of the skills of nurses and are also on the same banding scheme.

But Mrs Rowles, who won the Nursing Standard magazine's UK-wide healthcare assistant award this year, says she and colleagues encounter regular disapproval from nurses who believe they are not qualified to carry out many of the procedures they do.

"People don't know the clinical side of our work and many of them are nurses," said Mrs Rowles.

"They assume when I say I'm an HCSW that I have no qualifications. I've seen and heard that happen so many times to my colleagues and myself. I think we are undervalued, but a lot of it is down to misunderstanding."

Mrs Rowles detailed her experiences as an HCSW in the British Journal of Healthcare Assistants earlier this year.

Workers deliver complex care

BASED at County Hospital, Griffithstown, Mrs Rowles, has a Level 3 NVQ (National Vocational Qualification) in health and social care.

One of her key responsibilities is helping deliver a package of care for a young woman with cerebral palsy, epilepsy and learning difficulties, and there are visits to deliver a range of healthcare to others in their homes.

"Hopefully the article and the award will help change attitudes.

“It's the first time there's been an award for HCSWs, and I've met some of the top people in nursing in Wales and the UK through it," she said.

Next month she addresses AMs in Cardiff on the role.

The 28 year-old mother-of-two, from Mamhilad, is looking to begin a nursing degree soon, and believes her experiences as a healthcare support worker will make her better nurse.

"I've been providing frontline healthcare for seven years. I know how valuable HCSWs are and I won't lose sight of that."