Stracathro
The SRTC is located at Stracathro Hospital near Brechin, is a newly refurbished 24 bedded facility which will employ up to 50 clinical and 15 non-clinical staff when fully operational, providing inpatient and outpatient services.
The SRTC will cater for NHS patients from Grampian, Tayside and Fife Health Boards.
As well as outpatient appointments being carried out at SRTC, we will see patients at a further five satellite locations across the regions to reduce patient travelling times.
The SRTC will be open 24 hours a day, seven days per week. We will be carrying out day case and inpatient procedures including orthopaedics, general surgery, ear, nose and throat surgery, urology and minor plastic surgery. It is expected we will carry out some 3,000 cases per year.
Read all about Stracathro, Scotland’s first regional treatment centre.
Patients experience a piece of paradise in Scotland
Hopping bunnies, scurrying red squirrels, scampering deer and swooping buzzards regularly visit the beautifully manicured grounds of Stracathro Hospital, home of Scotland’s first independent sector treatment centre.
Surrounded by green fields and smoky-blue hills, the Scottish Regional Treatment Centre (SRTC) can easily claim to lie in one of the most beautiful locations in the UK.
Originally built as a temporary hospital for Second World War causalities, its one-storey buildings look slightly out of place among the stunning scenery, ten miles from the pretty market town of Montrose and half way between Aberdeen and Dundee.
“I think patients probably take the scenery for granted because they live here but it is an extremely lovely location,” said Bruce Stoker, SRTC ward manager.
And Bruce should know. He has lived in the area on and off for the last 40 years. Born in Montrose, Bruce moved away from Scotland as a child and after training as a nurse in the army, moved back to work at Stracathro aged 24.
Bruce had worked at Stracathro on and off for 23 years. His very first role at Stracathro was in 1979 as a nurse on Ward 11 where the STRC has been based since opening in February this year, after lying redundant for six years. The ward was extensively refurbished before the SRTC was set up.
He added: “We get great feedback from patients about how ‘beautifully clean’ the hospital is. One of the biggest concerns for patients is infection. Hand gel is placed at the entrance to each unit, which everyone must use.
“We use mobile nurse stations at the end of each patient bed so that the nurses don’t have to keep popping out to fetch items, reducing the risk of infection.
“Patient satisfaction is absolutely brilliant at around 99.6 per cent, either very good or excellent. Patients seem to love it.
“I give all patients a welcome letter to tell them about the hospital and I think it is the little things that we do that matter to them.”
All SRTC nurses are trained in critical care and are supported by a senior doctor, and an RMO, at all times.
Jan McCartney, senior registered nurse, has worked across the NHS and the private sector since starting nursing in 1989.
“I had heard about the SRTC before and it sounded like an interesting idea,” said Jan, staff nurse on the ward.
“A lot of the patients are genuinely impressed by the care they receive and the cleanliness of the wards. They say staff are pleasant and have time to answer any questions they may have.”
Sharing facilities can help cut waiting lists
The SRTC is unique in the way that the two NHS theatres are used out of normal working hours in an independent sector/public partnership.
Patients undergo routine operations from 6pm to 10pm from Monday to Thursday, from 2pm to 10pm on Friday, and from 8am to 5pm on Saturdays, using two NHS theatres and the endoscopy suite out of normal working hours.
“The SRTC is a great idea because it’s providing extra capacity. We can do 30 procedures on a Friday when the NHS closes the theatres at 12pm and another 30 on a Saturday when they are not being used. That’s 60 patients who are no longer waiting and that’s just over two days,” said Hazel Dinnie, theatre manager.
Hazel has returned to her roots after living in Dubai for eight years. She was born a few miles from the hospital and returned from the Middle East two years ago to work as a deputy theatre manager at a hospital in Kent before being helping to mobilise the SRTC.
“It was really exciting trying out new ways of working because the SRTC is the first of its kind, and it’s really rewarding to see it all coming together.”
Stepping back in time
Stracathro House was chosen as a site for a hospital during the Second World War because of its isolation - providing a haven for soldiers and civilians to convalesce.
It was designed to cope with up to 1,000 patients but intriguingly, only 999 were treated at the hospital.
The first patients were the victims of an air-raid on Montrose in 1940 but soon civilian casualties from London, Birmingham and Coventry, and later soldiers were transferred to Stracathro, via Brechin railway station, for treatment and convalescence.
After the war, the hospital became a teaching hospital with specialised departments including orthopaedic surgery and a high-tech surgical appliance unit.
The mansion, which stands at the edge of the drive into the hospital, was completed in 1827. Now a private home, the mansion once housed doctors and nurses before being sold by Tayside Health Authority in 2003.