Theme: Models of Care Year: 2018
74000 hepatitis C patients were unknown or not followed in France. Question to be
resolved was how to find these missing patients. Mobile hepatitis team, created in July
2013 took care of 504 HCV patients among 83% of current or formers drug users. We
made the observation in 2017 that 81% of “new” patients have already been
hospitalized in our hospital, specially in emergency units. Hepatitis C was noted in their
file as other medical histories like appendicitis or shin fracture! Drug users came one
to twelve times per year in hospital for different reasons, but not for hepatitis care. No
HCV care was proposed to these patients after other health problem resolution.
Objective:
Objective of our study was to identify HCV patients coming in our hospital by using
nurses of every service for a goal of 0 hepatitis hospital.
Methodology:
Our hepatitis specialized nurse did training sessions of nurses in every unit of our
hospital about hepatitis screening, diagnosis and treatment. She also taught how to
call hepatitis nurse if they had HCV positive patient and gave specific flyers and
posters.
Results:
In 7 months, hepatitis nurse did training sessions in 15 units of our hospital, including
85 nurses. We received 20 calls about 18 patients with hepatitis C. Seventeen patients
were current or formers drug users, 13 patients are known as negative viral load,
spontaneously or after antiviral treatment; 4 had positive viral load and took care by
our team; 2 started DAA. All drug users had risk reduction session. We observed rise
of phone calls in last 3 months.
Conclusion:
Hospital nurses training was easy to set up and cheap and useful to detect new
patients or known patients without medical care, specially drug users. Same project
could be done in every hospital.