"Thank you for all your dedicated and considerate care"

Radiology treatment feedback August - September 2023. All at NHS Tayside, Princess Alexandra Suite, Radiotherapy Department, Oncology, Ninewells Hospital.

Initially I provided feedback after a few days of treatment. However, it was agreed that it would be more appropriate to provide more feedback after completion.

Firstly, I wish to convey my sincere gratitude and thanks to all the staff who treated me so well. They are as follows: all listed below in alphabetical order. Apologies if any names have been missed out or spelled wrong:

Consultant: Dr. Merrick

Radiographers: Catelyn, Claire, Elanna, Ellen, Fiona1, Fiona2, Grace, Greg, Holly, Inisha, Isla, Jenna, Jerin, Jordan, Kelly, Lorri, Louise, Martina

Receptionists/Organisers: Bob, Jackie, Karen, Sarah

Specialist Support Nurses: Jenny, Kate, Susan, Wendy

Thank you for all your dedicated and considerate care. You make what could be a difficult time for many people much easier. Your friendliness, expertise and dedicated super interpersonal skills made me feel at home and were very much appreciated. It felt like a big family and I was a member being supported in my hours of need. I am forever grateful! Thank you.💕

Combined staff expertise and technology resulting in treatment are amazing. All from the Radiographers, the radio machines & Technicians, the Receptionist/Organising, Admin, integrated teamwork, computer systems, label printing, pharmacy, to the Specialist Support Nurses, and Doctors all integrate together providing a consistent and excellent service.

All of the aforementioned requires to be delivered on a daily basis and a treatment regime is tailored for each individual patient requirements. Quite a challenge! Having experienced that regime it becomes very clear that that delivery and its accuracy is of paramount importance. All delivered by dedicated caring staff that are so nice & professional who all know their jobs' very well and all work together as a larger team delivering super care.

In addition to great staff, it becomes clear that the environment for providing treatment is very important too for wellbeing. The environment is well thought out and uplifting! Stairs descend into a basement level and a wide bright corridor routes through with one wall depicting a Timeline Of Radiology leading to the Radiology Department. The department itself is open, spacious and well designed with curved walls and a main waiting area that is light,spacious and bright. Daylight floods in from upper windows at ground level into the main waiting area that also hosts a reception desk, seating, a stainless steel chilled-water dispenser and super clean toilets.

The aforementioned Timeline Of Radiology in the entrance corridor provides a comprehension and appreciation of the evolution of Radiology and how the high level of sophisticated treatment has become possible relatively recently because of relatively recent groundbreaking work and previous decades of dedicated hard work.

The treatment rooms too are spacious and host the big radio therapy machine that rotates around the treatment table where the patient lies and does not move once accurately positioned by expert staff. Treatment only takes about five minutes, is painless, and the machine rotates around the patient. Whilst receiving treatment background music lightly entertains with a mix of music from various eras. I found the music helped me relax and lighten the environment for both patients & staff, providing a pleasant distraction during treatment. Also providing visual distractions were eye catching, brightly illuminated colourful graphics of sunny blue skies on the ceiling. In another treatment room, cherry blossom trees in full springtime bloom were displayed on the ceiling.

The combination of the nice environment, facilities, and excellent staff help lift the spirit of what can be a very dark time for many.

Feedback would not be complete in my experience without reference to car parking. Unfortunately car-parking fell below reasonable expectations because of having to queue & wait 5-30 mins before a space became available on most days. However the car park had a high frequency of turnover so the wait was not usually too long (average wait 15min). Its advisable to add 30 minutes on to allow for waiting for a car parking space to become available. All so that staff are able to maintain the precise planned time schedule for each patient.

The Oncology & Accident & Emergency (A&E) carparks are separate but do physically join. It was found that some A&E visitors use the Oncology car park. It's appreciated that perhaps most A&E visitors might have experienced very recent trauma and were understandably quite upset. Car parking was probably the least-most thing on their mind. Understandably these people could be excused for being in an inconsiderate state of mind. Therefore it would not a priority for them to exercise reasonable thought towards car parking.

Nevertheless a clash of expectations is likely to erupt at peak hours given the reasonable expectations of each type of hospital carpark user.

Over my 28 days of carpark usage, it was observed that a queue of vehicles usually forms at the entrance. Daily oncology patients learn about car parking procedure over a couple of days because of their regular visits. However A&E patients & visitors dont really understand nor appreciate the queuing system and frequently jump the queue to the annoyance of patiently waiting oncology out-patients.

It was envisaged that the creation of an extra twenty spaces would solve the queuing problem. It was found that the spaces seem too small making it difficult to exit & enter the car. This has probably been caused by cars in general being made larger than in previous years?