Mobile theatre in place to help ease winter pressures

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 in early November and it became fully operational on November 26^th, when it welcomed its first patient.

The theatre is assisting the Trust to 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 procedures.

It is scheduled to be on site for six months and more than 700 people should benefit during its time on site at Goole and District Hospital.

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 hospital building through a bespoke and purpose-built link corridor to ensure patients feel the theatre is part of the hospital.

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 we’re 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.”

Simon Squirrell, Senior Account Manager at Vanguard, said: “We are delighted we have been able to provide this increased capacity for NLaG  and that we are able to provide a clinical environment to support patient throughput.”