An NHS bowel cancer screening service has issued a new video with information about what patients can expect when they attend a screening appointment.
The video is part of a joint campaign by health organisations and local authorities across the Tees Valley – set up to help raise awareness of bowel cancer.
Staff in the Tees bowel screening service, run by North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust, have recorded the footage to help patients who are invited to hospital for a colonoscopy.
This procedure involves using a flexible tube (endoscope) with a camera and light to examine the bowel for signs of cancer.
Esther Mireku, public health consultant at the trust, has been leading work to improve the number of people taking part in the screening process for bowel cancer and who attend follow-up appointments.
Your colonoscopy
When you come for the colonoscopy, we will obviously give you a, your appointment
and your, your date and time to come along.
When you come along, you, you come to the endoscopy department and there you are met by, um, an endoscopy nurse who will, admit you to the unit, and help you show you where you need to get changed before you go through for the colonoscopy test.
Hi, my name’s Melissa. I’m one of the bowel screening practitioners.
When you come in for your endoscopy, you’ll come to the endoscopy unit and go to the receptionist.
When you go to the reception, they will check you in and they will ask you to take a seat.
The nurse will then come and collect you from the reception area and take you to the admissions room.
This is where you will have the perfect opportunity to ask any questions or any concerns.
The nurse will go through some routine questions with you and following this, we will then take you to the changing room and this is where you’ll be taken to a cubicle and you’ll get changed into your dressing gown and you’ll be given a pair of dignity pants to put on.
You can then put on your dressing gown, in your slippers and take a seat.
You can either put all your personal belongings into your bag or you’ll be given a basket to put them inside.
Once changed in the cubicle, you will then take a seat and we will be with you.
As soon as a member of staff is available to take you into the endoscopy room.
The team will introduce themselves in the room, there will be an endoscopist who will be doing your test, an endoscopy nurse, a member of the bowel screening team, and an assistant who will look after you when the test is ready to start.
The team will turn down the lights so that the endoscopist can see the screen clearly, and the endoscopist will insert the camera into your bottom.
The test will take around half an hour.
The endoscopist will have a very good look around your bowel
When you have a colonoscopy.
It is a, a camera test that looks around your large bowel.
It’s a long, thin, flexible tube that’s inserted into your bottom.
The team in the endoscopy department will make sure that you’re comfortable.
We can offer you some sedation as well if, just in case the test is a little bit uncomfortable for you, we support you through that procedure.
Once the test is finished, the light will be turned back on and we will take you to the recovery area on a trolley.
So once you’ve had your colonoscopy, uh, we will go through the results of the test with you before you leave the department.
So, uh, a member of the screening team will let you know what we’ve seen on that test due that, uh, that day before you go home.
The majority of time, uh, we, we don’t see anything, um, concerning in the bowel and we can give you some, uh, reassurance.
The thing to remember, if we do see signs of bowel cancer when we do your colonoscopy test, the chances are, um, because you’ve taken part in bowel cancer screening, we found it very early, and bowel cancer when it’s found in at an early stage, is very treatable.
We know that if we find bowel cancer at an early stage, it’s very easy to to cure.
What we can also find when we do those colonoscopy tests are precancerous growths called polyps.
And this is even better because if we find those polyps, we can remove those polyps and prevent you even from developing bowel cancer.
Dr Mireku said: “For a number of months health and care experts from across the region have come together to help overcome challenges in diagnosing and treating bowel cancer as early as we can.
“One of these has been encouraging all of those people who have been invited to hospital for an appointment.
“By giving this group of people as much information as we can, and introducing them to some of the staff and to the unit itself, we are hoping this may reduce any concerns or anxieties they may have about what will happen.”
The video includes information about what will happen when patients arrive in the unit, including waiting in the reception area, being taken to the admission room, then to the changing room and to the endoscopy room to meet the team.
The procedure will then take place and following this the patient will be taken to the recovery area to go through the results of their test with a health professional.
Kelley Williamson, specialist bowel screening practitioner, says in the video: “If we do see signs of bowel cancer in the test, the chances are because you’ve taken part in the bowel cancer screening we have found it early and it is very treatable.”
As part of the national bowel cancer screening programme, every person aged 50 to 74 in Tees is sent a test in the post every two years.
This is posted back to a laboratory where it is tested and, if any traces of blood are found in it, an invitation is sent to attend hospital for the colonoscopy.
The campaign is being jointly led by North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust, the Northern Cancer Alliance, South of Tyne and Wear Pathology Centre, Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council, Middlesbrough Council, Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council and Hartlepool Borough Council.
For more information about bowel cancer screening, visit the NHS information page or call the national helpline on 0800 707 60 60.