News

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.

University Hospitals of Northamptonshire NHS Group (UHN) – which runs Kettering and Northampton general hospitals - is celebrating after an announcement that its key research partner has been awarded £4.1m

The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Leicester Clinical Research Facility (CRF) - based at University Hospitals of Leicester (UHL) NHS Trust - has been awarded the funding over the next five years to carry out early phase clinical research.

The NIHR Leicester Clinical Research Facility is one of just 28 CRFs that have been funded in England to expand early phase clinical research delivery in NHS hospitals. 

A state-of-the-art Surgical Robot has been used in Northamptonshire for the first time this week to help improve care for patients and tackle waiting lists impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.