BRADFORD hospital patients can now receive chemotherapy treatment in more comfort, thanks to Bradford Hospitals’ Charity.
Two specialist chemotherapy armchairs – worth £3,700 each – have been funded by the charity to ensure patients can receive the gruelling treatment at Bradford Royal Infirmary in the most comfortable environment possible.
But Carolyn Butterfield, who manages the Chemotherapy Day Case Unit, is keen to replace ALL the treatment chairs to avoid the impossible situation of having to choose which patients are treated in most comfort.
“We have eight treatment chairs in total – only two of which are top-of-the-range models which offer the very best comfort and safety features. Our six remaining chairs are quite basic and do not offer the same level of luxury.” she said.
“Patients can sit in chairs for treatment up to nine hours at a time and up to three times per week. That’s a significant amount of time to be sat, especially receiving chemotherapy treatment which is not particularly pleasant. Many of our patients also feel quite poorly when they arrive. The least we can do is let them get their feet up and feel comfortable.”
Safety feature
Carolyn explained that the new chairs also provide an additional safety feature which allows clinicians to push a button to lay the patient down quickly, if they suffer from anaphylaxis.
“This can happen very unexpectedly,” said Carolyn. “We current manage this safely by transferring patients to a bed, but it is much easier on the new chairs as we can push a button and the patient lies flat immediately for us to begin treatment.”
Hayley Collis, Head of Fundraising for Bradford Hospitals’ Charity, said: “We are delighted to see that the two new chemotherapy chairs are making cancer treatment more comfortable for our patients.
“The chemotherapy chairs are very specialist pieces of equipment, but also very expensive. We feel that we can’t put a price tag on comfort for patients who are going through this gruelling treatment and often feeling quite unwell. We believe our patients deserve to be in comfort, which is why we hope the people of Bradford will support this appeal to raise £22,200 to ensure ALL chairs offer the very best comfort and quality.”
If you would like to make a donation towards buying new chemotherapy chairs, visit https://www.justgiving.com/bradfordteachinghospital and indicate you would like your donation to go to our cancer fund.
Alternatively, if you or your workplace would like to fundraise, please contact Hayley Collis or Elaine Drake in the Bradford Hospitals’ Charity office on 01274 274809 or email charity@bthft.nhs.uk
More information about Bradford Hospitals’ Charity can be found at www.bradfordhospitalscharity.org
ENDS
Note to Editors:
- Bradford Hospitals’ Charity is one of more than 250 NHS charities based around the UK. It supports the strategic direction of Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust by funding projects which go over and above what he NHS provides.
- Did you know that, together, all NHS charities give £1million every single day to the NHS!
- In 2017, a new £28million wing opened at Bradford Royal Infirmary, which was part of a £75m investment to improve patient care across our hospitals. It provides world-class facilities for the elderly, children and a brand new intensive care unit. Bradford Hospitals’ Charity provided £260,000 to enable the Trust to create family friendly environments, state-of-the-art equipment and innovative distraction toys and games for young people.
- With the support of Bradford Hospitals’ Charity, BTHFT was also able to provide more cots, including intensive care and high dependency cots, new family accommodation, a revamped counselling suite and a dedicated room for mothers to express milk for pre-term babies when the new neonatal unit opened in 2015.
For further media information, please contact Kelly Thornham, Communications Officer, at communications@bthft.nhs.uk or call 01274 382265
Twitter: @BTHFTCharity Facebook: bradfordhospitalscharity Instagram:bradfordhospitalscharity LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/bradfordhospitalscharity
Note to Editors:
- Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust:
Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is responsible for providing hospital services for the people of Bradford and communities across Yorkshire. We serve a core population of around 500,000 and provide specialist services for 1.1 million people.
Our 5,500 staff work over several sites, including Bradford Royal Infirmary, which provides the majority of inpatient services, and St Luke’s Hospital, which predominantly provides outpatient and rehabilitation services. We also manage local community hospitals at Westwood Park, Westbourne Green, and Eccleshill.
In early 2017, a new £28 million wing opened at Bradford Royal Infirmary, part of a £75m investment to improve patient care across our hospitals over a five-year period. It provides world-class facilities for elderly care, children’s services, a state-of-the-art intensive care unit with increased single-room provision and a retail concourse.
The new wing is a continuation of our work to improve patient experience after our new £2 million neonatal unit officially opened in January 2015. Our maternity services were recently shortlisted for the Royal College of Midwives’ (RCM) Midwifery Service of the Year Award, recognising excellence and innovation in the provision of maternity care.
In 2017, we also completed a £2m refurbishment of our Emergency Department (ED) as part of an ambitious vision to create a more efficient acute medicine service for the people of Bradford. It has been designed to provide a slicker and more efficient service, with faster senior clinical involvement at an early stage in the patient pathway.
As a teaching hospital, we are at the forefront of education and development in healthcare, and have an excellent reputation for research performance. We are one of the leading centres in conducting applied research in the country, particularly in quality and safety, elderly care and rehabilitation.
The Trust is home to the Bradford Institute for Health Research (BIHR) where researchers have led the development, validation and implementation of the award-winning Bradford Electronic Frailty Index (eFI) which helps calculate an elderly person’s risk of disability, impairment, falls and complications of chronic diseases, as well as their diminishing independence and capability. This is now being used by 98 per cent of all GPs across the country.
Our award-winning Ophthalmology department is home to numerous worldwide clinical trials taking the lead in eye care research and we are one of only three sites in the United Kingdom to be enlisted in the Perioperative Enhanced Recovery Hip Fracture Care of Patients with Dementia (PERFECTED) study, which will investigate how the NHS can introduce better standards of care to improve outcomes for people with dementia.
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