PATIENTS in the Wellington area are being offered cancer treatment without having to travel to Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton.

It follows the extension of Somerset NHS Foundation Trust’s chemotherapy and supportive therapies service to the community hospitals in Wellington and Bridgwater.

A similar service was previously run through a Bumble Bus, which was provided by the charity Hope for Tomorrow and visited locations in Somerset.

But during the pandemic, the way these services were provided outside of Musgrove changed.

Emma Wells-Burr, Somerset FT’s Beacon Day Unit sister, said she was pleased to be able to use some of our community hospitals to run these vital services.

“Once the pandemic hit, we needed to start thinking about how we could safely provide our chemotherapy service in line with social distancing,” she said.

“We initially needed to consolidate the service in the more spacious Beacon Centre at Musgrove Park Hospital, but the experience of our patients is very important to us and we knew this meant many people would need to travel further than before.

“We therefore started to think about how we could provide these services differently to our local communities.

“Firstly, we set up a four-chair chemotherapy service at Wellington Hospital in July 2021 that operates twice a week – Tuesday and Thursday.”

The chemotherapy services at both community hospitals are run by healthcare professionals at Musgrove’s Beacon Centre, who rotate through the hospitals.

About 10 patients a day are seen at Wellington Community Hospital. The larger Beacon Day Unit at Musgrove Park Hospital sees up to 60 patients a day.

Every patient who uses the community hospital chemotherapy services must have had their first two treatments at the central hub at Musgrove Park Hospital first.

“By running services outside of Musgrove, we can provide vital chemotherapy and supportive therapies closer to people’s homes,” Emma continued.

“It means we have increased the number of patients we are able to treat by about 25 per cent which is great news.

“It can be especially beneficial to patients who have long treatments as they can avoid that long journey into Musgrove, which can be even more daunting as many people can feel really tired after a spell of chemotherapy.

“There’s a cheap council-run car park across the road from Wellington Hospital. With the clinic settings inevitably much smaller our colleagues tend to have that little extra time with patients too.

“We’ve had really positive feedback from patients who’ve used the two community hospitals, especially when it’s for a venesection session, where a unit of blood is taken over 30 minutes, which could possibly mean a day off work if they need to come into Musgrove.

“We aren’t stopping here either as we want to extend our chemotherapy service in the community further and are looking at how we could set up a service in West Somerset in the near future.”

The chemotherapy team have a smart new look thanks to a kind-hearted businessman. Trevor Phelps, from Milverton, who is the husband of one of the team’s staff nurses, reached out to local churches and businesses who donated money so the trust could purchase branded fleeces for colleagues to wear.