By Marjory Inglis, health reporter

PLANS TO radically change the way community nurses work are causing “twitchiness” among staff across Tayside.

Senior health service managers, leading local nurses and union representatives held a private meeting in Dundee’s Ice Arena yesterday to plan how they will introduce a new type of community super nurses by merging the roles of district nurses, health visitors, school nurses and family health nurses into one.

The changes will affect around 300 community nurses across Tayside and have caused concern about what the future holds for nurses and their patients.

Last night a local health union representative said that management “made all the right noises” at yesterday’s meeting which he described as a preliminary meeting to try to agree the way forward and ensure staff were consulted about how the scheme would be implemented.

Robin Hunter, of UNISON, said last night, “There is inevitably a lot of worry and concern amongst staff about the whole thing.

“This is a pretty radical change so twitchiness is inevitable but nothing that happened at the meeting today caused anyone to be more twitchy than they were before.

“Management made all the right noises but there is a long way to go yet.”

Last month the Scottish Government announced that Tayside had been chosen as one of four test beds for the controversial new community nurse scheme.

At the time of the announcement, NHS Tayside’s director of nursing Elizabeth Wilson said nurses would be given a range of additional skills to meet the needs of the population in Tayside.

A spokeswoman for the Scottish Government admitted the scheme had caused some concerns within the healthcare community but stressed it was only a pilot exercise at this stage.

She said the model would be tested in four pilot sites throughout the year so that an informed decision can be made in the spring of next year about the future of the community nursing service.