New child friendly x-ray rooms

Basingstoke and North Hampshire NHS Foundation Trust has recently completed a modernisation project to replace x-ray equipment in two of their rooms. This latest technology not only improves the service to all patients but is especially focused on our younger patients. 

Both x-ray rooms now have Direct Digital Imaging, using similar technology to modern digital cameras. x-ray pictures can now be seen instantly as the radiographers do not have to wait to check these.  This means most examinations take half the time.

John Beamer, Radiology Service Manager, explained,” This new equipment means more patients can be seen and patients spend less time waiting in the department This improvement helps all our patients using the department - those that have an outpatient appointment and those that need to come down to the department from the ward on their bed. We have also created a child-friendly environment but without the use of cartoon characters as these tend to be age or gender focused and can be off putting for both teenagers and adults. The open plan room design makes also makes working easier.

The x-ray room decoration has been strongly influenced by paediatric environment research carried out at Southampton General Hospital. Dr Hazel Pratt, Basingstoke’s Consultant Paediatric Radiologist guided the pre-installation team to produce striking rooms with strong primary colours, clean lines and bright lighting.

The total cost of this modernisation project was around £200,000.

All new x-ray equipment links with the Picture Archiving and Communications Systems (PACS) which replaced traditional x-ray films with digital x-ray images in March 2006.  Patients have digital x-rays taken that can be viewed by staff on computer screens around the hospital.