An emergency doctor is leading an initiative to provide hospital patients with fresh socks and basic supplies – as part of wider efforts to tackle health inequalities in the local community.
Jess Walker, specialty doctor in the urgent and emergency care department at the University Hospital of North Tees, came up with the idea to help patients brought into the service for treatment.
Jess explained: “We have a lot of people coming through the department who are homeless or sofa surfing who come in with nasty ulcers on their feet and legs.
“Sometimes we have to cut a patient’s socks off to assess the ulcers and other times we just give them back and the patient puts them over their infections.
“It felt very undignified for these patients to have to put their filthy or soiled socks back on once we had treated and bandaged them.
“So, working with an ethical clothing company called Leiho, we now provide new socks to any patients who needs them.
“Thanks to our trust volunteering team, we also have other clean socks donated to us.
“Something like this can make a real difference to someone’s life, especially those facing health inequalities like so many do in our local community.”
Part of wider work to help community
George Simpson, consultant in emergency care, added: “As part of the project we have a number of plans in place aimed at helping people.
“Jess had the idea of giving these patients a clean pair of sock to go home with – and to start bought 10 pairs herself.
“Now working with the hospital volunteers and a charity with local links she has bags of them and is branching out to toiletries and hygiene products.
“I want to acknowledge and thank Jess for the care and compassionate she has shown to our patients.”
The work is part of a number of measures the department is looking to help people in its community.
This is part of work being carried out by the Emergency Medicine at the Deep End, a network of people working in acute care committed to providing equitable and accessible emergency care.