Monday 24th February 2020
Michelle Donachie received DAISY Award
Congratulations to Michelle Donachie, Urology Oncology Nurse Specialist, who received a DAISY Award on Tuesday. Michelle’s nomination was read by the daughter of a patient who was diagnosed with terminal bladder cancer, praising her care and advise at a difficult time.
Her nomination read: “Michelle helped us come to terms with this. The end came much sooner than expected, she was there fore us throughout this time but not just then also afterwards which just shows how much of a caring and compassionate nurse Michelle is. She is the kind of nurse this trust should be proud of.”
The DAISY awards offer the opportunity to say ‘thank you’ by sharing your story of how a nurse or midwife made a difference and anyone can make a nomination, so we would really encourage you all to get involved.
Monday 7th October 2019
Kidney care award for Uro-Oncology CNS Anneliese Peach
Congratulations to Anneliese Peach, Uro-Oncology CNS, who has won the Melinda Whale Award for care in kidney cancer nursing from Kidney Cancer UK. This is a new aware in memory of radio presenter, James Whale’s wife Melinda who was co-founder of the charity.
Anneliese was nominated by a colleague for her tireless support of kidney cancer patients at St James’s and her encouragement and support of the team in oncology. She attended an event at the House of Lords recently where she was presented with her aware and a cheque for £1500 for her team. Really well done to Anneliese on this well-deserved award.
Monday 11th March 2019
Improving Prostate Cancer pathways
The Prostate multi-disciplinary team, with support of the Cancer Board, spent last week reviewing the prostate cancer diagnostic and treatment pathway. The team put timings on stages of the current patient journey – from referral of a patient with suspected cancer through to treatment – and identified where there are delays so that they can look at solutions. There has been fantastic engagement and enthusiasm from all members of the MDT and departments. With the continued input from NHS Improvement, Cancer Alliance and the Lead Cancer Team, the Prostate MDT will evolve what is already an excellent pathway, to one that enhances the patient experience, meets the new NHS targets and is a model for other centres in the region and further afield.
Monday 4th March 2019
1500 robotic surgery milestone
Last week one of the Da Vinci surgical robots landed in Bexley Wing atrium giving patients, visitors and staff the opportunity to try their hand at using it. This was part of a celebration recognising that a milestone 1500 patients have now had robotic surgery at St James’s.
Since the current robot was installed in Geoffrey Giles Theatres in 2011, it has assisted our specialist surgical teams in the operations of 1565 patients. Last year teams performed over 300 robotic cases across four specialties; Urology, Gynaecology, Thoracic and Colorectal surgery. This is great for patients as it helps them to recover more quickly so they can go home sooner – well done to everyone!
Monday 3rd December 2018
Jane Brocksom elected BAUN President
Congratulations to Jane Brocksom, Benign Urology Clinical Nurse Specialist, who has been elected as President of the British Association for Urological Nurses (BAUN). This is a national charity which aims to promote and maintain standards in urological nursing and patient care, as well as providing a mutual network of support to colleagues working within urology. Jane’s appointment was announced at the BAUN annual conference last week. Well done Jane, this is very well deserved!
Monday 23rd April 2018
Recognising Success: record day in Urology Theatres
Last week our Urology and Theatre teams worked together to do a total of 12 procedures in one day for men with enlarged prostates, all of which were planned as daycases. Ordinarily, lists for this type of procedure would include no more than five patients, and would usually have involved an overnight stay in hospital. Instead patients were cared for by the team on the Admissions Lounge at St James’s before and after their procedure.
This has followed work that the Urology team have undertaken as part of the Leeds Improvement Method to look at improving the pathway for patients with this condition. By changing the way they do things and introducing a new surgical treatment option, they have been able to allow patients to go home sooner after treatment, reduce complications and generate cost savings. This is hugely important for patients in particular, but also for the Trust as a whole.
Well done to Mr Oliver Kayes, Consultant Urological Surgeon, and teams from Abdominal Medicine and Surgery and Theatres and Anaesthesia for working together to think differently and improve services for our patients. In the spirit of continual improvement the teams will be coming together on Wednesday to look at how things could be made even better in the future.
Monday 26th March 2018
LTHT leads Greece to European cup success!
Congratulations to our very own Dr Dimitrios Deligiannis who led Team Greece to victory in a recent battle to be crowned the European Association of Urologists’ guidelines experts!
Dimitrios, who is a clinical fellow at the Trust, won a close fought battle against peers from both Georgia and Italy in the EAU Guidelines Cup. Supported by their respective teams, Dimitrios and his fellow competitors were challenged on their knowledge of clinical guidelines covering Peyronie’s disease, urolithiasis, renal, testicular and penile cancer to name but a few.
More than 450 individuals took part in the contest at the EAU’s conference in Copenhagen last week with Dimitrios emerging victorious after a tough four rounds of questioning
Monday 18th December 2017
Congratulations to Jane Brocksom, Senior Urology Clinical Nurse Specialist, who has been appointed as President Elect of the British Association of Urological Nurses (BAUN). Jane will be fulfilling the role of Vice President for 12 months to learn the ropes, and will take over as President this time next year. Jane’s role will be supporting the education of nurses into urology and raising the profile of urological nursing as a specialty. This is a great achievement and I am sure Jane will do a fantastic job.
Wednesday 11th October 2017
Our nurse led cystoscopy service commenced a year ago following 12 months of training so I was pleased to meet the team and hear about their success and aspirations for the future. A cystoscopy is a procedure that is used to visualise the inside of the bladder. The service, based in the David Beevers Day Unit at St James’s, was commissioned to improve the patient experience, particularly for patients receiving bad news. I also heard great feedback from a patient, who has benefitted from the new service.
Wednesday 11th October 2017
Later on Wednesday I met our Medical Education and Urology teams who hosted a national training course for newly appointed urology registrars from across the country. For the second year running, LTHT was chosen as the host organisation for this innovative simulation based course. A faculty of surgeons from all over the UK shared their experience with delegates in a ‘Urology Boot Camp’. I’m really proud that LTHT is leading the way in training the NHS professionals of the future and it was great to meet the teams involved.
Monday 2nd October 2017
It was fantastic to hear from two teams at this week’s Report Out. The purpose of the event is to receive updates from the five workstreams which are part of our improvement programme. First to present was a team from the Urology discharge and TURP team who talked about a Rapid Process Improvement Workshop (RPIW) which they held on J42 ward. The team was focusing on improving the ward round process and trialled a “Registrar of the Week” approach which saw one registrar complete the full round for all patients: traditionally the ward will see up to 7 or 8 teams completing ward rounds and patient assessments simultaneously. A number of improvements were noted from having a single ward round – they included better task management and completion, more electronic discharge advice notes (E-dan) completed, having a single registrar as point of contact for all patients, and more time was spent with patients.
Monday 5th June 2017
On Friday I attended the Leeds Improvement Method Report Out with Linda Pollard, Trust Chair, and Simon Neville, Director of Strategy and Planning. It was great to see a number of people turn up to hear the latest updates from the Urology and Opthalmology teams.
The Urology team has reduced the time taken for an EDAN to be produced from 349 minutes to 206 minutes. Their process of an EDAN beginning in theatre and then authorised by a senior nurse on the ward means more patients are being discharged before lunch. Since starting this work no additional medication has been sent to patients homes in a taxi following discharge which is a fantastic achievement and sits with our policy of spending less money on taxis across the Trust.
Monday 30th January 2017
The Urology team have successfully performed the first UroLift procedures in the Trust.
The UroLift device helps to treat men with an enlarged prostate (Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia). The device is implanted during a minimally invasive procedure, and helps to relieve symptoms of the condition.
Olly Kayes, Consultant Urologist said: “We have collaborated with the Virginia Mason Institute to develop new, dedicated clinical pathways for men with enlarged prostate in our hospitals. This will improve our ability to deliver fast, safe and effective patient-centred care.
“We anticipate the improvement in streamlining this pathway and the introduction of UroLift, as well as our state of the art robotic surgery programme for prostate cancer, will provide additional, far-reaching benefits for other patients seeking urgent cancer treatments and emergency urological care in Leeds by increasing day to day capacity and access to these dedicated services.”
Wednesday 22nd June 2016
Huge congratulations to our Urology team led by Sanjeev Kotwal, Steve Prescott and Sunjay Jain who successfully completed their first four Robotic Cystectomies and intra-corporeal ileal conduit procedures (the removal of a person’s bladder and urinary diversion without the need for open surgery), under mentorship of Professor Monish Aron from the University of Southern California.
All four patients have recovered well and have since been discharged, well below the usual average hospital stay for the traditional open procedure. The team have made fantastic progression in understanding the technical aspects of this procedure and can now perform them without any guidance from the mentor.