Spotlight on a department: Queen Elizabeth Hospital NHS Trust

Published: 16 November 2012

Gateshead is on the south side of the river Tyne, which separates Gateshead from Newcastle, in the north east of England. Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) serves a population of 190,000. Gateshead Health is the second biggest employer in the town, employing more than 3,000 people.

The radiology department has six nurses supporting 10 radiologists, two of whom undertake interventional radiology. Having a small establishment of radiologists, however, works positively for the radiology nurses as it helps to provide a more developed career structure as the senior nurses undertake advanced practice roles in the areas of hysterosalpingogram and venous access.

Nurses cover many areas of vascular intervention including peripheral angiography, angioplasty and stenting, and aortic stent grafting. QEH has a regional gynaecological oncology centre and because of this nurses insert a large number of vena cava filters.

Embolisations - both routine (such as varicocele and uterine fibroid) and trauma - take place in our intervention room. Non-vascular work includes percutaneous transhepatic cholangiography. Patients requiring colonic stenting are considered for the CReST trial. 

Pre-assessment is a key part of our role and all our patients undergoing vascular intervention attend pre-assessment with nursing and consultant staff prior to their procedure. The nurses do a large amount of work with patients undergoing CT colonography to ensure their safety while preparing for the procedure.

Nurses work to a number of patient group directives (PGD) including the administration of gastrograffin for CT colonography, and are about to extend the pre-assessment service to include inpatients and all patients needing biopsy and drainage procedures.

Education is a key part of the role and this supports the student nurses during their radiology placement and student radiographers during their placement with the nurses.

The nurses help to support other clinical staff by assisting in the delivery of training in "responding to emergencies" for radiographers, for example, to ensure they can work safely within their own PGDs.

Gateshead Health NHS Trust has an initiative called the care quality accreditation framework which assesses each ward and department against standards in areas of patient safety, clinical care, workforce and patient experience. The radiology nursing team was proud to become the first department in the trust to be accredited with this award.