A Foundation Trust is preparing for winter pressures with the addition of a mobile theatre unit which will help it increase its operational capacity by an estimated 120 procedures a month.
Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust (NLaG) took delivery of the Vanguard Healthcare Solutions mobile theatre at Goole and District Hospital in early November, and it became fully operational later that month. It is helping the Trust carry out an extra 30 operations a week, providing services for patients across Scunthorpe, Grimsby, and Goole, and will be used for urology, gynaecology, and general surgery.
It is scheduled to be on site for six months, during which time over 700 people should benefit. Designed and built by Vanguard, the theatre provides an anaesthetic room, operating theatre, scrub area, a two-bed first-stage recovery area, HEPA-filtered environmental air, integrated medical gas banks, changing room, and utility areas. Members of the Vanguard clinical team are supporting the Trust’s own surgeons and anaesthetists.
The new theatre has been installed to the side of the main hospital next to the staff car park, and is linked seamlessly to the main building through a bespoke and purpose-built link corridor. Kerry Carroll, associate director of Strategy and Planning at NLaG, said: “We have been working hard behind the scenes planning for the winter period, and are delighted to have increased our capacity to treat patients through using this mobile theatre.”
Shelley Bradburn, theatre sister at Goole Hospital, said: “The clinical team here at the hospital have welcomed the additional facility, and it means we can see more patients and will hopefully, over the winter, not see procedures having to be postponed or cancelled.”
