Fulfilling the lives of our staff

Company news

Feb 17, 2011

If anyone knows about the quality of the care delivered at Southampton Treatment Centre, it’s our staff.  So when our TSSU Manager Clare Harper required a painful lump to be removed from her elbow, there was only one place she was going to go.

“It never crossed my mind to have the procedure done anywhere else, despite the fact I actually live 20 miles away in Portsmouth.  I see on a daily basis the quality of our staff and their overall standard of care and I knew I could trust them.”

Clare suffered an injury to her elbow eight years ago, when she fell on a garden pot and cut her arm so badly it required over thirty stitches.  She began suffering with pain over the past year and, when she had her elbow examined, she was told a segment of the pot had not been cleared properly on her previous hospital visit eight years before – causing the lump and subsequent pain she was suffering.

Clare was booked for Day Surgery just a few weeks after her initial Outpatient appointment at the Centre and was greeted by some familiar faces:

“It was a bit strange being the ‘patient’ at first and I wasn’t sure what to expect because everyone obviously knows me.  However the care I received was no different to the excellent service the staff provide to a normal patient who they’ve never met – first class!

Being a patient I looked at things from a different perspective and I can now see why we receive such excellent feedback from our patients.  The big thing for me was that the Consultants and Nurses treating me explained everything as we went through the different stages.  Although I work at the centre, I’m not clinically trained, so there was a lot that I didn’t know about how things were done!”

Clare went home shortly after her surgery and after a short recovery period is now back to work managing the TSSU department, where she oversees an essential service to the Operating theatres and Endoscopy unit at the Centre, providing them with the correct instruments for each procedure they undertake and ensuring that they are clean, sterile and ready for use.