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48 week wait for skin cancer treatment

Posted By woodpeckerhs56

"48 week wait for skin cancer treatment"

About: Aberdeen Royal Infirmary / Plastic Surgery & Burns General Practices in Grampian

(as a carer),

My mother has been diagnosed with skin cancer on her leg after months of treatment from the GP surgery who said it was a leg ulcer.  We have now been told it will be at least a 48 week wait for my mum to receive any treatment. This is completely unacceptable.  If the GP surgery had correctly diagnosed this instead of treating it with various ointments and dressings for months and months on end perhaps she would have been further up the waiting list.  For someone to wait nearly a year to even get an appointment with Plastic Surgery for the cancer to be removed is beyond disappointing.  

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Responses

Response from Kirsten Dickson, Quality Improvement and Assurance Facilitator, Quality Improvement and Assurance Team, NHS Grampian 6 months ago
Kirsten Dickson
Quality Improvement and Assurance Facilitator, Quality Improvement and Assurance Team,
NHS Grampian

Submitted on 10/04/2025 at 12:00
Published on Care Opinion at 12:00

picture of Kirsten Dickson

Dear Woodpecker66,

Thank you for getting in touch.

I’m so sorry to hear about your mother's skin cancer and the frustration caused by the delay in diagnosis. I work for the Quality Improvement and Assurance team in NHS Grampian and part of my role in repsonding here is to make sure the feedback we receive through Care Opinion reaches the teams it was intended for. I would like to make sure this is shared with the GP practice and wondered, if you feel comfortable doing so, would you send me the name of the GP Practice you visited? The majority of the Practices in Grampian are independently run and don’t access the feedback shared here, but I can send on to them for reflection and learning. My contact details are: email: kirsten.dickson@nhs.scot or telephone/text: 07885720267 You can also contact the practice directly and share your feedback. This would mean sharing your contact details as well as seeking your mother's permission to share feedback on her behalf, but also the practice team would be able to give a response specific to your mother's case.

Your feedback was shared directly with the Plastics team, who provided the appointment. Their wait list for appointments is longer than they would like it to be. Patients are placed on the list in terms of clinical prioritisation - treating the most urgent cases first. This, as you can imagine, is not something that is taken lightly. We are doing our best, with the resources we have, to see everyone as soon as possible.

The Unit Support Manager from the service would be happy to speak to you in further detail about your mother’s place on this list, but again, you would need to have your mother's permission for information to be shared. If you would like us to look into this, please contact shannon.bruce@nhs.scot who will guide you through the next steps.

Take care,

Kirsten'

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