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Helping create meaningful memories for Northamptonshire NHS & health and social care staff and their families.

Brands, businesses & individuals are being given an incredible opportunity to recognise and thank Northamptonshire NHS and health & social care staff by supporting thankufest a programme of 15 festivities taking place over the next 15 months, starting on 17 June 2022.

After months under construction, the new Macmillan Cancer Support Centre at Kettering General Hospital has welcomed its first patient.

Shaped by local people living with cancer, the brand new state-of-the art cancer centre brings together a range of vital cancer information and support services under one roof. It will provide cancer information, practical and emotional support as well as advice on welfare benefits, wig-fitting and signposting to other local services.

Two amazing nurses and a midwife from Kettering General Hospital have received DAISY Awards for the outstanding, compassionate, and sensitive care they have given to patients.

Patients and staff at Kettering and Northampton general hospitals are joining in this week’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations.

 Staff at the hospitals have been busy decorating their areas with Jubilee flags and hand-made decorations as part of a competition for best-dressed ward, department or office space.

 Patients at the two hospitals will receive special Jubilee-themed meals and the children of staff members have drawn bold Queen and Jubilee-themed pictures to help us decorate our wards, and win a competition.

Kettering General Hospital has taken part in national celebrations to mark the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee on June 2 by planting 100 trees in its 33-acre grounds.

On June 1 Group Chief Executive Simon Weldon, and the hospital’s chaplaincy, estates, and health and wellbeing teams, placed a Jubilee plaque next to where some of the saplings have been planted in the hospital’s Pocket Park.

Kettering General Hospital’s Organ and Tissue Donation Committee has donated 100 books to the hospital’s A&E department and Intensive Care Unit that help children understand what has happened when they lose loved ones.

The committee – which is made up of community volunteers and members of staff connected to organ donation – presented the gifts after noticing that these areas had run low on their stocks of the specialist books.

The breast screening teams at Kettering and Northampton general hospitals have succeeded in catching-up on appointment backlogs created by the COVID-19 pandemic.

It means that more than 90% of women in Northamptonshire have been offered an appointment for screening within three years if they are aged 50-70. This is in line with the national standard for recovery and means women can expect their screening appointment to be on time. 

Breast screening units across the country were paused nationally between March and June 2020 because of the impact of COVID-19.

This meant all breast screening units – including KGH and NGH – had appointment slots they needed to catch-up on in order to ensure that all women aged 50-70 had an appointment within three years.

An imaginative Kettering General Hospital team that used a fast-food trailer to help provide a drive-through testing service for hundreds of clinically vulnerable patients during the pandemic has won a national award.

Kettering General Hospital’s Anticoagulation Team set up the INR Drive-Through Service for patients who need regular tests while taking the blood-thinning drug warfarin – used to treat serious heart and pulmonary conditions.

They have been awarded a Cavell Star Award by the prestigious Cavell nurses’ trust for the way their dedicated team worked together to provide care for their patients in such an innovative way. 

Kettering General Hospital (KGH) is one of nine NHS endoscopy units taking part in the first UK clinical trial of an innovative artificial intelligence (AI) device which could help better detect bowel cancer.

The ground-breaking study – called COLO-DETECT - is being led by leading Gastroenterologists at South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust.

The units are trialling the use of GI Genius, an AI device designed to help clinicians identify polyps during colonoscopies – examinations using a flexible camera to detect changes or abnormalities in the bowel (colon and rectum).

So far, 390 patients from across the country (see editor’s notes) have taken part in the study including 114 at Kettering General Hospital – making us one of the lead contributors to the research.