The renovated department facilities and new machine will provide enhanced diagnostics and an improved patient and staff experience, including:
- Atmospheric lighting to help patients feel relaxed.
- Improved communication between clinicians and the patient while using the machine, with a camera for patient-monitoring.
- Larger size ‘doughnut’ for a more comfortable experience.
- Colour-coded countdown for breath hold, helping patients know when to hold their breath during the scan.
The 12 week installation – which saw the Trust introduce a modular scanner on site to continue service – marks a significant investment in healthcare for the hospital, which will include a comprehensive training programme for staff.
Kirsty Walker, deputy head of imaging at ROH, said: “As a specialist Orthopaedic hospital with a large number of oncology patients, CT-guided biopsies are an integral part of our care service but they require patients to undergo anaesthesia.
“Through careful planning and collaboration across teams, we were able to continue to provide these critical interventional treatments while we replaced our CT scanner. The temporary solution involved a second portable cabin to act as an anaesthesia and recovery suite for patients to receive treatment, comfortably and safely. Not only could we provide urgent CT-guided biopsies for our oncology patients, we were also able to continue providing CT-guided injections for our spinal patients without needing to refer them to other hospitals in the region while these works were underway.”