Talking to Gowri, health professional for NHS Shetland

Gowri Saravanan is the only Neurology Specialist Nurse for NHS Shetland. We caught up with Gowri to find out what the past year has been like and how NHS services in Shetland were affected by the global pandemic.

I have been an MS Specialist Nurse since October 2019. When I started my training to become a Neurology Specialist Nurse, I developed a passion towards understanding MS diagnosis and the impact it has on a person's daily life, and how we can support them.

Working with people with MS. To be a part of their journey and see what support we can offer to improve their daily life. Our service is provided by the Consultant Neurologists from NHS Grampian and I feel very much supported by the Neurology team.

I am the only Neurology Specialist Nurse in Shetland and was redeployed briefly during the pandemic. However, I was able to continue to provide support to people with MS by telephone, emails, and the ‘near me' secure video call system to make sure services were continued and patient's needs were met.

We did not know what impact Covid-19 would have in Shetland initially and the numbers of cases have been low in comparison to mainland Scotland. However, we knew there would be a big impact on people who were vulnerable but we managed to make sure that there was continuity of care for existing patients and those newly diagnosed.

The biggest challenge for me has been managing MS services remotely for the majority of patients as they could not come into the hospital due to Covid restrictions and shielding.

Through the MS Trust, I have recently managed to complete my MS development module which helped me to acquire new knowledge on MS diagnosis, management and planning the service development to fulfil patient needs. I am planning to support the Neurology Consultant and the wider multi-disciplinary team in implementing new services available for the benefit of people with MS. For example, fampridine and siponimod have been approved to be used within Scotland and it's proposed to have them available for NHS Shetland patients in the near future. I am keen to provide support towards this for the benefit of MS patients in NHS Shetland.