Eddie Barron is Nutricia’s Head of Nursing. He spoke to us about why he’s proud to work for Nutricia, and precisely why the Nutricia Homeward Nursing Team is a very special group of nurses. 

I started my career by volunteering in a care home when I was back in Ireland, just to see whether I liked the idea of becoming a carer or not. It turned out that I did, so I went into nursing, ultimately working on a high dependency unit in Liverpool. I was in nursing for eight years, and then I went to work in pharmaceutical sales for 20 years, before joining Nutricia as a Regional Nurse Manager for the North of England and Scotland. In 2024, I became Head of Nursing at Nutricia.

My role at Nutricia has allowed me to combine the commercial aspect of my 20 years in pharmaceutical sales with my 8 years experience of providing care through nursing, and I really appreciate that I am now able to utilise both of those skill sets together.

What is great about Nutricia is how the company and its staff are consistently committed to embodying its values, the foremost of which is putting patients at the centre of all that we do. Whenever I’m in meetings, the questions that we’re always asking ourselves are “How does this affect the patient?” and “What are the right things to do for the patient, in terms of the decisions that we’re making?” That has been a real step change from some of the roles I’ve had in other commercial organisations, where at times there has perhaps been a dual focus on what is best for the patient and what is best for the organisation, which can lead to compromises being made. That’s not to paint other companies in a bad light, rather to highlight how remarkable it is that Nutricia is consistent in making decisions that are always true to our core values.

The most important part of my job as Head of Nursing is looking after the Homeward Nursing Team, which comprises four regions of nurses, with approximately 45 nurses on average in each team. While the patient is at the centre of everything that we do, my job is to make sure that my team is safe both in the practice that they’re carrying out, and safe within their roles. So if my nurses are safe, that means the patients are safe - and that protects us as an organisation while also protecting the patient.

By that same token, if my Homeward Nurses are happy, then it stands to reason that they will be performing at the peak of their abilities. So when I initially took on my role, my two key aims as the Head of Nursing were to reduce the attrition rate and reduce the sickness rate, because I felt that those were good indicators of the wellbeing of my team, while also being good indicators of their performance. If my nurses are happy in their job, that means they are less stressed, have fewer sick days, so feel secure in their role and are uninclined to change jobs. Maintaining the wellbeing and satisfaction of my nurses is my primary role.

On a day-to-day basis, I link in with our supply chain and our marketing team to ensure that Homeward Nurses always have the right products, literature and equipment to support their patients. I also work closely with the contracts team so we are aligned on how we can meet our contractual commitments and make patients and healthcare professionals lives easier. 

I’m also often involved in conversations with key stakeholders in the NHS; so if, for example, we have a meeting with some of the key stakeholders in a specific area, my role will be to explain how our nursing service makes a difference to people’s lives and why the Nutricia Homeward Nursing Service is so important.

The Homeward Nursing Team is a particularly special group of people, because it takes a special sort of person to do their work. As nurses, we obviously care about our patients tremendously. So Homeward Nurses are usually ‘people people’, and yet much of their work is done alone. When you go into a patient’s home, deliver a package of care, then step back over the threshold to leave, you know there is no other person with a healthcare background who will be seeing that patient on that day. That means you’ve got to be absolutely sure that everything you’ve done is safe and leaves the patient in a better position than they were in before your visit. There’s no colleague to turn to and say ‘can you help me over here for a minute’, or ‘can you check on this patient in an hour’s time.’ As a Homeward Nurse you have to be very self sufficient, and you have to be comfortable with being a lone worker who may not see your colleagues in person very often. That’s what makes them special: the ability to be responsible and confident in the care they’re delivering, while maintaining regular contact with patients and team members. Because keeping those lines of communication open is what ensures that both our nurses and our patients remain safe.

I don’t think there is another team as large in the UK - either in the NHS or in other organisations - that delivers what the Homeward Nurses do to the same extent. Yes, lots of nurses change enteral feeding tubes, but no team changes as many enteral feeding tubes as we change - and that makes us (Nutricia) the experts in enteral feeding, care and delivery. On a monthly basis, we change roughly 1200 feeding tubes. As a result, we have the expertise, the data and the responsibility to establish what is best practice. Two years ago, for example, we had a major study published around a new aspect of enteral tube feeding care that we could deliver in the community; it was backed up with data, it was peer reviewed, and that research has now been established as best practice. So part of my role as Head of Nursing is to make sure that everything we do is evidence based, and - if the evidence isn’t there - then we go and produce the evidence ourselves.

There are approximately 200 Homeward Nurses. When you compare that to the NHS, it’s miniscule - and yet we deliver a really important service to our Nutricia Homeward patients, seven days a week, 365 days a year. The Homeward Nurses provide a telephone advice service for our patients over weekends and outside regular working hours and this guarantees that guidance is always available to patients no matter what time of the day or night; if they have a question that needs answering, they can reach one of our nurses. So what the Homeward Nurses accomplish and provide is really quite amazing.

My favourite aspect of my work is that it’s just so varied. I can be speaking to a nurse about resolving an issue that they have in their local area first thing in the morning. An hour later, I might be talking to a mum to help her with a question about a feeding pump. In the afternoon, I could be talking to our supply chain about a product such as a syringe that we may be having difficulty supplying, and establishing what the alternatives are. Come the end of the day, I could be talking to someone about research or a new clinical policy. No two days are ever the same.

But what I really love is working with brilliant people to achieve the common goal of great outcomes for our patients. The people-centred aspect of the job is so rewarding, and the variety of people I deal with is so endlessly interesting - and it’s especially wonderful when you hear the feedback we get. That could be from our nursing teams saying how much they enjoy the role, or new nurses coming to me after their first year and saying ‘This is the best job in the world!’ However, most importantly, there’s the feedback from patients. I take great pride in the fact that our patient satisfaction survey that we send out each month always comes back with at least four or five stars for the nursing service from more than 90% of responders. That’s the level of service I want to provide for patients and that’s something you can only do with the help of a brilliant team, and by being part of a company that is dedicated above all else to putting patients at the centre of everything we do.