The Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust provides cancer services for a population of over 340,000 local residents and diagnoses over 2,300 new cases of cancer each year.
Sadly, that equates to eight or more patients receiving a cancer diagnosis every working day throughout the year - cancer really can affect more than one in four of us at some point during our lives.
The Great Western Hospital has the facilities to diagnose and treat many types of cancer. A wide range of services for both adults and young people are offered, including specialist surgery, chemotherapy (drug therapy), haemato-oncology (cancer of the blood), and palliative and supportive care services.
We provide inpatient, day-case and outpatient services for cancer treatments. Where highly specialised treatments are required, patients are referred to the appropriate specialist centre, which is usually a recognised centre of excellence for that particular type of cancer and its treatment. For example, lung surgery patients (for lung cancer) are referred to the Royal Brompton Hospital and/or the Oxford Radcliffe Hospital. Patients requiring radiotherapy are referred to the Oxford Radcliffe Hospital.
Dove Ward is our ten-bedded, highly specialist ward where patients who require inpatient treatments, such as complex and lengthy chemotherapy, are cared for.
Dove Ward benefits from having ten single rooms all with en-suite facilities and is staffed by highly trained medical and nursing staff.
All day case chemotherapy services are provided in our Day Therapy Centre. This light and airy treatment area has an informal and relaxed atmosphere and is staffed by highly trained, dedicated nursing and medical staff.
The Day Therapy Centre provides a comprehensive range of chemotherapy delivery, alongside procedures such as intrathecal chemotherapy, bone-marrow biopsies and scalp cooling for specific types of chemotherapy treatments.