Like many primary care nurses, Christine Fortune spends a significant proportion of her time treating minor ailments and illnesses: dressing wounds, prescribing antibiotics and providing health advice to the steady stream of patients that troupe through her surgery door.
But while her consulting room looks traditional, it is located in no ordinary practice: Ms Fortune combines a health visiting role with three mornings a week seeing homeless and vulnerable patients at the Broadway Centre in Shepherd's Bush, a resource for rough sleepers, run by London-based homelessness charity Broadway.
Increase in rough sleepers
London has a higher level of homelessness than any other region of the UK. Almost 4,000 people were seen rough sleeping on the capital's streets in 2010, eight per cent up on 2009, according to figures from Broadway.
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