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Long wait for treatment to start

Posted By BonnieT1

"Long wait for treatment to start"

About: Cancer Services / Radiotherapy

(as the patient),

I want to say how fantastic everyone has been. I am now half way through my treatment. Once you are on the pathway everything is very well planned and organised and if there are any little glitches along the way they are resolved instantly. And it’s all done in such a nice way - really pleasant and friendly people.

My complaint would be the long wait for treatment to start. My diagnosis was in January and treatment didn’t start until early March. I really struggled with this long wait and felt that two months was a long time to wait until treatment started.

I realise that it takes time to plan the treatment and get results from scans etc but I really struggled to deal with this time delay as it was obviously a very anxious time for me personally. For instance I understood that it should take two weeks from being referred by your GP to see an oncologist but in my case it actually took about three. There were other times when I felt a few days or a week was lost whilst waiting for appointments to come through.

Car parking is also an issue here - this can be very stressful for the patient.

In my opinion I think the toilet facilities are very poor and feel that these could be renovated.

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Responses

Response from Robert Kelly, Clinical Support Worker, Radiotherapy, NHS Tayside 2 weeks ago
Robert Kelly
Clinical Support Worker, Radiotherapy,
NHS Tayside

Submitted on 03/05/2024 at 12:43
Published on Care Opinion at 12:43

Dear BonnieT1, thank you for taking the time to feedback your experience in our Radiotherapy Department. My name is Bob, one of the Support Workers who welcome you to our department. I am sorry to hear that you feel uncomfortable with the timescales from CT to treatments. As you guessed, there are indeed an awful lot of steps and people involved in the planning in order to deliver treatments safely and precisely to obtain the best outcomes for patients. I do appreciate though, how you might feel, waiting to start treatment.

It is gratifying to hear, now that you are you are receiving treatment, that you feel our department is well organised and communicate with our patients whenever there are any delays. I will pass on your kind words to our Therapeutic Radiographers.

On the subject of the car parking and toilets, our Head of Therapeutic Radiography continues to take the car parking issue to departmental meetings as he is conscious that this does create stress. He is also chasing up the completion of the toilet flooring with our Estates Department. We had a major flood some time ago and contractors have yet to complete the work in the toilets. On behalf of everyone here, I hope you benefit from your treatments. Please talk to us at Reception though should you have any concerns.

Kind regards... Bob

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