Anouchka has been working at Novellas Healthcare since September 2020 as a support nurse coach. In that capacity, she works on various patient programs, including in gastroenterology and oncology.
An ‘average’ working day for Anouchka soon makes it clear that she has a very varied job. “I start by checking my emails and contacting the patients assigned to me,” says Anouchka. After that, she does the necessary business for her patient programs. “My job is to contact patients to make an appointment with them for home visits, whether it is to teach them how to inject themselves, to take a blood test, … Sometimes the contacts are also limited to phone calls to check on the patient, how he/she is living with his/her disease and treatment and to answer questions.
We never take the place of the doctor, and we never answer medical questions in his place. We always refer the patient to his doctor.
Following the request of the physician who previously proposed the PSP to the patient, I train him to inject independently. I also report to doctors after seeing patients… There’s not really a typical workday. The workload mainly depend on the doctors’ requests.”
“I also do pharmacovigilance and report possible side effects of medication. Every pharmaceutical company has its own pharmacovigilance department, so it’s not up to us to decide whether certain side effects are treatment-related.”
Anouchka’s advice for anyone thinking about becoming a nurse at Novellas Healthcare is very clear: “Go for it! It’s a great job. The management of Novellas has a lot of confidence in us, which also gives us a lot of freedom and autonomy. That’s really nice. On a hospital ward, you always have a boss who checks whether your work is done. I don’t have that in this job, and that’s very stimulating. This way of working as a nurse is really unique.”
