"NHS Tayside CATS"

I attended an outpatient appointment at the Continence Advisory and Treatment Service.

I saw a lovely, empathetic nurse who was a good listener and took time to investigate my problem fully, making recommendations and a further referral to another service. I felt that she dealt very professionally with a potentially embarrassing topic.

A few things could have been better - the appointment letter included a very poor map of the clinic location (needs improved), 4 pages about Privacy (unnecessarily detailed?) and a page about Covid 19 which seemed out of date. It would have been helpful had this letter included the name of the nurse I would see, as this would have been more personal, welcoming and reassuring.

A bladder diary was included with the letter (although there was no mention of this in the letter). Following the instructions in the diary, I completed it and emailed a scan of it to CATS (which was acknowledged). However, the nurse at the appointment did not seem to know that I had been asked to email it and did not have it. Luckily, I had taken the original along.

A further point is that the letter stated that I should attend with a comfortable bladder, but in fact the nurse wanted to perform the first scan with a fairly full bladder (by which time I had already visited the toilet!) This should have been clearer in the letter, to get the most out of the procedure.

I subsequently received another letter from NHS Tayside, this time concerning a telephone consultation with Perth Continence Team (no mention of CATS as such). Again, this letter did not name the person to whom I would be talking, yet this would have been a simple addition and given clarity that this was a follow-up to the above visit.