Macmillan Cancer Support chief officers visit KGH
Key members of the Macmillan cancer charity visited KGH on June 26 to see for themselves how it is transforming care for patients.
Macmillan’s Chief Executive, Gemma Peters, Chief People Officer, Graham Jones, Chief Financial Officer, Steve Clayton, and Chief Information Officer, Rox Heaton, were given a tour of the Macmillan Cancer Support Centre at KGH by our Macmillan Head of Nursing for Cancer Ruth Giles.
They heard from local patient Elaine Kowalczuk, from Kettering, on her continuing cancer journey.
Elaine described how much the support of the centre had mattered to her, and how it had helped her transform her approach to the disease and enabled her to tackle the challenges it brought to her and her family.
The tour included visits to counselling rooms, a therapy room, and a multi-purpose room as well as meeting interim manager Julie Barber, cancer information and support assistant, Dawn Hart, Macmillan Personalised Care Lead, Alison Gac, and Dr Charlotte George from the psychology service along with regional Macmillan leaders.
KGH’s Macmillan Cancer Support Centre has been supporting patients since May 2022 and was officially launched by Lord Spencer in January this year.
In May it achieved the Macmillan Quality Environment Mark (MQEM) demonstrating that the local team has been found to have gone above and beyond to create a welcoming and friendly space that meets people’s needs.
Ruth told the visitors the back story of how the Support Centre. She described the search for a premises several years ago, to contemplating whether it would be possible to build it in it is current location in a courtyard above the services in the hospital’s basement below it.
How a multi-disciplinary project group had worked out all of the details to enable the fantastic purpose-build centre to be built.
They heard of how innovative building methods had enabled rubble from construction to be sucked out of the site through the main hospital entrance in a kind of industrial giant vacuum cleaner.
The building took shape during the Covid pandemic and is now available to patients for their ongoing advice and support.
It is open Monday – Friday, 9am until 4pm. No appointment is needed. You can also contact the centre on 01536 493888 or email kgh-tr.cancerinfo@nhs.net. Alternatively you can call the Macmillan Support Line on 0808 808 00 00 or visit macmillan.org.uk