The MELISSA training bus will be visiting locations in Boldon, Jarrow, South Shields and Washington to raise awareness of screening for the condition.

People aged between 55 and 74 who have smoked have a higher risk of developing lung cancer and will be invited to attend a Targeted Lung Health check.

This is done in two parts. First you will have a phone call or meeting with a health professional who will ask you about your health and look at your risk of developing lung cancer.

If you are at higher risk you will be invited for a lung scan which takes a detailed picture of your lungs and will be looked at by experts. If they find any problems you will be asked to come back for more treatment.

Why are Targeted Lung Health Checks being offered?

It can be hard to spot lung cancer. There are often no signs of symptoms at an early stage. Around seven in ten cancer patients are diagnosed too late. This means there is less chance that treatment will make them better.

Targeted Lung Health Checks help find problems earlier. You might not even know there is anything wrong. It helps save lives. This is because treatment can start sooner. It is also more likely to work. Most lung cancers grow slowly. This means they can be found at an early stage by a lung scan.

Upcoming Targeted Lung Health Check Promotion Days

The MELISSA training bus will be parked in the following locations and dates to raise awareness of lung cancer and promotion of screening:

• Monday September 9 – South Tyneside Hospital car park
• Wednesday September 25 – the Peel Retail Park in Washington
• Tuesday October 8 from 10am to 2pm – Jarrow Town Centre
• Monday October 23 – Doxford Park Shopping Centre

On Wednesday October 9 from 10am to 2pm members of the lung cancer screening team will also be in the foyer at ASDA Boldon.

The events are being supported by the Roy Castle Lung Foundation, which has worked tirelessly to raise awareness of lung cancer and promotion of screening.

More information on the lung cancer screening programme can be found on the attached leaflet you can download here and you can also watch the film here:

The change means the NHS in England is one of the first countries in the world to offer access to a 24/7 full package of mental health crisis support through one single phone line.

People of all ages, including children, who are in crisis or concerned family and loved ones can now call 111, select the mental health option and speak to a trained mental health professional.

NHS staff can guide callers with next steps such organising face-to-face community support or facilitating access to alternatives services, such as crisis cafés or safe havens which provide a place for people to stay as an alternative to A&E or a hospital admission.

Previously, local health systems had their own separate phone lines, which were fast-tracked during the pandemic and took around 200,000 calls per month.

For people who need support at A&E, if there is a risk to life, every emergency department in England now also has a liaison psychiatric team available to offer specialist care.

NHS Talking Therapy Services are also available for people who need help with other mental conditions such as anxiety, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder and PTSD and anyone can refer themselves online via NHS.uk or by contacting their GP.

The NHS continues to advise people to call 999 if there is a serious risk to life.

NHS National Director for Mental Health, Claire Murdoch, said: “We know that record numbers of people are suffering with their mental health, and we want to ensure that when people are in crisis, they have easy, straightforward access to the support they need.

“While the NHS made significant progress during the pandemic with local services creating their own crisis phone lines, we want to go a step further by giving people everywhere in England one single point of access via NHS 111.

“And in doing so, I am extremely proud that we will become one of the first countries in the world to offer a free universal package of support to people through one easy to access phone line.

“The new integrated service can give people of all ages specialist mental health support and ensure they can be offered face-to-face support in a safe and therapeutic environment.

“So, if you or someone you know needs urgent mental health support, please call 111, and select the mental health option.”

Minister of State for Care, Stephen Kinnock, said: “As part of our plans to help fix the broken health system we want to ensure we give mental health the same attention and focus as physical health.

“For the first time, there is one number you can call whether you are feeling physically unwell or worried about your mental health to access the support you might need.

“Separately, we are prioritising mental health by recruiting an additional 8,500 mental health workers to reduce delays and provide faster treatment alongside reforming the Mental Health Act.”

Rethink Mental Illness Chief Executive, Mark Winstanley, said: “A mental health crisis is traumatic and disorientating, and getting help as quickly as possible is vital. The last thing people need when they or a loved one is in crisis, is uncertainty about where to turn.

“Today, the NHS have made it easier to access urgent support via 111, building on provision already in place through crisis lines. We welcome this important step, and hope it will make it simpler for people to access the help they need.”

A full list of mental health support options is available via the NHS.uk website. The service is also suitable for deaf people, with tailored services available via the NHS 111 website.

Free listening services are also provided by charities such as The Samaritans or Shout Crisis text line.

The NHS has invested an extra £2.3 billion into expanding mental health services, and this latest innovation will help patients in crisis get directed to the support they need quickly.

The health service has met its ambition to expand community mental health treatment by 370,000 people per year for patients with severe mental illness.

Source: https://www.england.nhs.uk/2024/08/nhs-111-offering-crisis-mental-health-support-for-the-first-time/

More than 500 patients at the trust who stayed at least one night in hospital during November 2023 took part in a national survey by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

Between January and April, 1,250 patients aged 16 or over at each participating NHS trust were invited to take part in the survey and 63,573 people across 131 NHS trusts responded – including 512 patients at South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust (STSFT).

All scored a number of areas relating to their stay out of ten. The scores for STSFT were as follows:

• Admission to hospital – 7.4
• The hospital and ward – 7.3
• Doctors – 8.7
• Nurses – 8.2
• Care and treatment – 8.1
• Operations and procedures – 7.3
• Leaving hospital – 6.9
• Feedback on care – 3.9
• Kindness and compassion – 9.0
• Respect and dignity – 9.0
• Overall experience – 7.9

All were in line with the national scores.

The overall results showed that people’s experiences of inpatient care have deteriorated since 2020. The results for the 2023 survey remain generally consistent with 2022 and 2021 following significant declines for almost all questions in the 2021 survey compared with 2020.

Most respondents reported a positive experience in their interactions with doctors and nurses, such as being treated with respect, dignity, kindness and compassion and being included in conversations, generally remaining consistent with the previous year, although those receiving clear answers to questions and having confidence and trust has decreased slightly.

Discharge from hospital remains a challenging part of people’s experiences of care. Fewer respondents felt involved in decisions about their discharge from hospital, with less than half feeling they were given enough notice before being discharged. Over four in ten felt certain about what would happen with their care after leaving hospital.

Experiences of hospital waiting times have continued to decline. While elective patients remain generally positive about their experience of how long they had to wait before being admitted to hospital, with most rating the quality of information they received while on the waiting list as good, more people felt that they had to wait too long. Although just under half of elective patients reported no change to their health while waiting for admission, just over four in ten felt their health worsened.

Positive findings

Interactions with staff

• Most people (72% for both doctors and nurses) said they ‘always’ got answers to their questions they could understand, remaining consistent for doctors (73% in 2022), and a slight decrease for nurses (73% in 2022).
• 80% and 78% of respondents said they ‘always’ had confidence and trust in doctors and nurses respectively, although this has decreased slightly for both doctors (81% in 2022) and nurses (79% in 2022).
• Respondents who felt they were treated with respect and dignity has remained at 82% since 2021, while 80% said they were treated with kindness and compassion.

Meeting individual needs

• 70% of respondents said they were ‘always’ able to take medication they brought with them to hospital when they needed to.
• 75% of respondents said they were ‘always’ offered food that met any dietary needs or requirements they had.
• 88% said they got enough to drink during their time in hospital, which has remained consistent since 2020.

Involvement in care

• When asked about being included in conversations, 75% said both doctors and nurses ‘always’ included them, compared with 74% and 75% respectively in 2022.

Key areas for improvement

Patient discharge from hospital

• 29% said they had little to no involvement in decisions about their discharge (19% said they were ‘not very much’ involved and 10% said they were ‘not at all’ involved), compared to 25% in 2022, while 33% of respondents said they were involved ‘a great deal’, a statistically significant decrease of 4 percentage points from 2022.
• 48% of respondents said they were given enough notice about when they were going to leave hospital, remaining consistent with 2022.
• 46% said they ‘definitely’ received enough support from health or social care services after leaving hospital, unchanged since 2021, and remaining 5 percentage points lower than in 2020.
• 44% of respondents ‘definitely’ knew what would happen next with their care after leaving hospital, compared with 45% in 2022.

Waiting times

• 23% of elective patients said they would like to have been admitted ‘a bit sooner’ and 19% ‘a lot sooner’ (compared with 22% and 17% respectively in 2022), while 58% said they ‘did not mind waiting as long as they did’, compared with 61% in 2022.
• 43% of elective patients said their health deteriorated while waiting to be admitted to hospital, though 49% said their health remained the same.
• 18% of respondents felt they had to wait ‘far too long’ to get to a bed on a ward after admission, which remains 10-percentage points higher than in 2020.

Overall experience

• 51% of respondents rated their overall experience of inpatient care as a 9 or 10 (where 10 is a very good experience) compared with 50% in 2022. 4% of respondents reported a very poor experience overall with scores of 0 or 1, which remains unchanged since 2021.

How experience varies for different groups of people

People who were considered frail reported poorer than average experiences for all the questions analysed in the survey.

Similarly, respondents aged 16 to 50, those admitted for emergency care, or those with a disability, dementia or Alzheimer’s, a condition which affects their physical mobility, or ‘another long-term health condition’ reported poorer experiences of inpatient care for almost all questions we explored.

Respondents with a neurological condition reported poorer experiences for more than half of these questions.

In contrast, older people, male respondents, people who were in hospital for an elective admission, those who stayed in hospital for only one night, and those not considered frail or disabled generally reported better experiences across most areas of care.

Louise Ansari, Chief Executive of Healthwatch England, responded to the CQC report. She said: “These findings reflect what people have told us about their experience of hospital discharge, with a lack of communication from services making them feel forgotten and confused about the next steps.

“Poor hospital discharge processes can leave people unable to get home or get the appropriate help once at home. It also leaves people at risk of returning to their GP, hospital or social care teams soon after discharge. And uncertainty about next steps can increase the pressure on unpaid carers who are left without support to help the person they care for.”

She added: “A rise in the number of patients who say their health deteriorated while awaiting hospital admission is troubling, especially given the NHS’s efforts to tackle waiting times.

“People tell us about the detrimental effect of delays, cancellations and long waits on their health and wellbeing. The NHS won’t reduce waiting times overnight, but more needs to be done to prioritise those in greatest need and improve the experience of waiting.

“Central to this is providing more regular check-ins about people’s condition and pain levels and better support for physical and mental health symptoms. We also want to see more regular publications of data on people’s experiences, and for the NHS teams to measure their performance against experience as well as total numbers of appointments.

“While most people report good care from staff once they get to hospital, patients need more support while they wait.”

The full report can be found here and the findings for STSFT here.

Anyone needing a pharmacy this Bank Holiday Monday (August 26) can visit either of Asda’s South Tyneside stores.

The Asda pharmacy at the stores in North Road, Boldon Colliery, NE35 9AR, and Coronation Street, South Shields, NE33 1AZ, will both be open from 10am to 4pm.

Should you be out of the borough on the day and require pharmacy services, a full list for the region can be found here.

From Monday August 19 the Norchem Healthcare Limited pharmacy at Cleadon Park Medical Centre on Prince Edward Road is being operated by Bestway National Chemists Ltd.

It will be open from 9am to 6pm, Monday to Friday, and closed Saturday and Sunday.

The contact number for the pharmacy is 0191 456 4158.

Jennifer Owen, Chair of the Northern Region Local Dental Committee including Gateshead and South of Tyne, said there were an increasing number of patients who have now had a number of years without any routine dental care.

As a result dentists were seeing high levels of dental neglect with corresponding high levels of gum disease and a rise in tooth extractions. Even more worrying were figures showing the highest ever number of referrals for sinister lesions and sepsis flags.

Ms Owen, pictured, was speaking to Healthwatch South Tyneside’s AGM at Hebburn Central. Addressing board members, staff and members of the public, she said the root cause of the problem was an NHS dental contract which was no longer fit for purpose.

More and more dental practices were moving into more profitable private practice following a 22 per cent real terms cut in NHS funding since 2010, she said, meaning surgeries were having to carry out more complex treatment at a loss.

In response, 90 per cent of practices in England are not accepting adult NHS patients and 80 per cent are not accepting child NHS patients. Meanwhile, morale among staff in dental practices is at an all time low – as evidenced by comments on industry social media groups.

Fortunately the borough was bucking the trend, with 23 contract hand backs in the region since April 2023 – but none in South Tyneside.

The second guest speaker was Anna Hargrave, Divisional Director – Community Services at South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust (pictured at the event).

With a more upbeat message, she explained in her presentation how the key focus for community services is now home first following hospital discharge, rather than patients going into a care home. This was very positively received by members of the public attending the AGM.

The two presentations were followed by a Q&A session, where a variety of issues were raised by members of the public. The event ended with a light lunch and the opportunity to network.

John Lowther, Chair of Healthwatch South Tyneside, thanked both guest speakers for their presentations and time answering questions from members of the public.

He said: “It was great to see a strong public turnout and positive feedback even if the news on the future of local dental services was somewhat downbeat. If anyone is struggling to access a dentist we would urge them to contact us for advice on practices accepting NHS patients or 111 if they need emergency treatment.”

Healthwatch South Tyneside recently published its annual report for 2023/24 and its new Operational Plan for 2024-26 which identifies adult mental health, young people’s mental health, Pharmacy First and care in the community as its four key priorities.