A care home nurse has won a major award after creating history by becoming the first in Wales to qualify to prescribe medication to residents.
Ezelina Dacruz, 50, gained her qualification after studying at Bangor University while also carrying out her duties as the clinical lead at Glan Rhos Nursing Home at Brynsiencyn.
Care leaders say Ezelina’s trailblazing qualification could become the blueprint for how social care is delivered in Wales in the future – allowing swifter prescribing and treatment and reducing the need for GP callouts and ambulances attending care homes to take residents to hospital.
A celebration to mark her achievement was held at Glan Rhos Nursing Home to mark Ezelina’s landmark achievement.
She was presented with a Wales Care Award by Ynys Mon MP Llinos Medi who was accompanied by local Senedd members Elfed Williams and Mair Rowlands.
Ezelina’s husband Thomas, a consultant in diabetes and endocrinology at Ysbyty Glan Clwyd, and their son Joshua, 10, also attended the celebrations, along with representatives from the nursing and social care sectors.
Modest Ezelina, who is originally from Malawi, was “deeply grateful” for the award.
Ezelina, who has worked at Glan Rhos for 21 years and qualified as a nurse in Malawi in 2000, said: “I thought having a prescription qualification would really help our residents.
“As the clinical lead, if somebody is poorly in the home I do the GP callouts and I do the e-consultations for the patients.
“I thought me being able to prescribe would make things easier and the residents could get the treatment quicker.”
Ezelina, who lives in Llanfair PG, started the qualification, funded by Glan Rhos, said the knowledge she gained was invaluable in the care of her residents.
Completing the Nurse Independent Prescriber course had been a challenge but that Glan Rhos, which has 78 staff, supported her through her studies.
She said: “I had to attend classes, do self-study, we had a lot of assignments and essays and we had to do exams as well, so it was hard work.
“It was quite intensive, it took all my free time.
“But my husband and son were very supportive and they encouraged me.
“The home was very supportive, they paid for the course, and they gave me the time I needed to study and they gave me lots of moral support to encourage me to keep going.
“I must also thank our GP practice, Penbryn Surgery, who were very supportive, with the GPs acting as my supervisor and assessor.
“I am very pleased to receive the special Wales Care Award, it is a real honour and I am very grateful.”
Wales Care Awards founder and chair, Mario Kreft MBE, who is also the chair of Care Forum Wales, said: “Ezelina is without doubt a trailblazer and she deserves every accolade.
“What she has done is a very important step forward and we need more people like Ezelina in the independent care sector.
“We must do more to make sure that residents in our sector don’t have to go into hospital and don’t necessarily have to have the GP called out, and that is why having prescribing nurses is such an important thing.
“Ezelina deserves every credit, as do the management here at Glan Rhos for giving that support and helping her attain what is absolutely a first in Wales. This is a blueprint for the social care sector going forward.”
According to Llinos Medi, she was honoured to present the special Wales Care Award to Ezelina, adding that Glan Rhos was a fantastic example of a successful homegrown Welsh business.
She said: “I am the business and trade spokesperson in Westminster for Plaid Cymru and I am constantly reminding people that over 99 per cent of businesses in Wales are SMEs – Small and Medium Enterprises.
“These businesses are the backbone of the economy in Wales and we know that social care is part of the economy that doesn’t get enough attention.
“Businesses like this are crucial for family life and also crucial for the economy in rural Wales.
“To have a Welsh family running a business like this and for people to be spoken to in their first language of Welsh is vitally important for our communities.
“We are lucky on the island we have examples of businesses like this all across the island.
“The home employs a significant number of people, offering them a career in a really important sector.”
Kim Ombler, the registered manager at 52-bed Glan Rhos, and who runs the home with her sister Helen and brother David, said they were “incredibly proud” of Ezelina.
“This will really help our clients because it means they won’t have to wait for a doctor to come out, especially at weekends, when you have to go through the out-of-hours service,” she said.
“This has to be the way forward for social care, and it helps the NHS too with bed blocking and patients waiting in ambulances outside hospitals.
“What Ezelina has achieved is amazing and to be the first in Wales makes it extra special.
“It makes our home the first independent provider in Wales to have a nurse with this qualification, and that is something we are very proud of.
Elfed Williams MS said: “I am immensely impressed by what Ezelina has done, and it is important to celebrate successes like this.
“This is such an important sector for our economy and our communities. The people who work in the social care sector are an exceptional group of people who do a very important and difficult job.”
Mair Rowlands MS added: “The home itself is a wonderful, small, family-run business in Wales, and we have so many similar businesses across Wales.
“If this business was not here, it would obviously mean less employment in the area, so what it does is very important to its community.”
