Nottingham University Hospitals operates on 1000 cancer and urgent surgery patients since lockdown measures enacted
Teams at Nottingham University Hospitals have worked tirelessly since the start of Covid-19 to protect operating capacity for cancer patients and those in need of urgent surgery, and have now completed 1000 operations of this kind during lockdown.
This would not have been possible without the amazing collaboration and flexibility of our surgical, anaesthetic, theatre and critical care teams, to name but a few, to ensure that we have maintained sufficient capacity throughout the Covid-19 surge to offer operations to all cancer and urgent care patients who were clinically safe to proceed with treatment.
We have established effective partnerships with our local independent sector providers, BMI Healthcare and the Spire group, who have made their facilities available to the NHS and worked in partnership with us to ensure seamless pathways for patients.
Amanda Dorkes, Executive Director of BMI Healthcare at the Park Nottingham, says:
“The incredible collaboration between BMI Healthcare and Nottingham University Hospitals has enabled us to come together in partnership like never before.
“This has not simply been a quick case of just sharing facilities, this has been staff from the Public and Independent health sector, nurses, doctors, speech therapists, dieticians and many more, really uniting together at a time of great need, working together, learning from each other and achieving this phenomenal outcome for Nottinghamshire patients.”
James Catton, Consultant Surgeon and Cancer lead at Nottingham University Hospitals comments:
“The past few months have been some of the most challenging the NHS has ever faced but despite this we have worked incredibly hard as a multi-disciplinary team at Nottingham University Hospitals to continue to safely care for our most urgent patients.
“Colleagues from anaesthetics, surgery, management, admin, critical care and the Independent Sector have come together and over the past 12 weeks we have operated on over 1000 cancer and urgent patients.
“As Cancer Lead I am incredibly proud of this achievement and we could not have done it without the collaboration with the Independent Sector and the capacity it has provided. I would like to thank everyone who has been involved in making this process a success.”
James’s message to the public is: “I urge anybody who is concerned about their symptoms to seek advice from their GP.”
Additionally, the Trust has made sure that we’ve had the capacity to keep going with chemotherapy through adapting and pooling our resources. No patients have been deferred or cancelled as we have been able to continue providing this service throughout; any treatment decisions have been clinically driven.
Dr Ivo Hennig, Consultant Medical Oncologist, at Nottingham University Hospitals says:
“It is a massive credit to all involved in providing systemic anticancer treatment, from the prescriber through the teams making the medication up to those who deliver treatment that they pulled together as a team to ensure patients continue to have access to chemotherapy and other anticancer treatments”.
The Trust’s 1000th lockdown patient
Paul Bush, 65 from Carlton, was the 1000th patient to be treated for cancer at Nottingham University Hospitals since the start of lockdown. He is successfully recovering from surgery and treatment for Sarcoma, and was discharged back to his family home ahead of his upcoming 66th birthday in July.
He said: “I had some natural apprehension about spending time in hospital under the current circumstances.
“The staff at Nottingham were brilliant; jovial in spirits, reassuring and caring at all times. I was calmed by the social distancing that I witnessed whilst in hospital”.
His message to anyone who is stalling and hesitant about having something checked is “do it straight away, do not hesitate, it is so important.”