Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust

What a year it has been here at the trust. 👶 A baby is born every two hours. 🚑 Someone is treated in the emergency department every 3 minutes. 🏥 An outpatient procedure is carried out every 3 minutes. Our Annual General Meeting is now underway. Follow along for the latest updates.

🐶 We welcomed two very special new recruits to the trust, Fergus and Toffee, our Trainee Therapy Dogs. Fergus and Toffee had their 'induction' earlier this week and visited the Royal Berkshire Hospital to build-up their confidence and make them feel comfortable in a hospital environment. Once they are happy, the intention for them is to visit wards across the hospital to meet patients and staff with the aim of improving patient experience.

We are making sure that we are ready for the future by: 🔀 Delivering our largest ever efficiency programme 🏗 Improving our existing estates and facilities – new elective surgical hub for urology and outpatients to reduce waiting times. 🏥 Progressing with our New Hospital Plan

We are being innovative to improve our services by: 🏥 Delivering care closer to home through our 7 sites. 📈 Utilising our Health Data Institute 🔀 Harnessing staff talent through Improving Together 

We will build on our partnerships in Reading and across West Berkshire to: ↩️ Improve patient flow 🚑 Reduce pressures on our Emergency Department ♀️ Launching our Women’s Health Hub.

Our staff and volunteers make the Trust - and that’s why we pride ourselves in investing in our people and living out our CARE values. 💙 🌟 We are learning from 4,500 conversations from staff about their experience of working here at the trust. 🌟 Introducing new initiatives to reduce violence and aggression towards staff. 🌟 Investing in our staff health and wellbeing offer.  Providing 1,500 health checks to our staff – and expanding our offer to an additional 1,000 colleagues.

🚭 We now offer nicotine replacement therapy for all inpatients who smoke and have supported 150 patients since the launch. We are also expanding our support for staff to stop smoking.

Our Annual General Meeting is on Monday 7 October. We welcome staff, patients, carers, families and the public to attend the event that will give an in-depth look at the trust's performance for the year 2023/24 and our plans for the future. 👉 bit.ly/4eq5oXb

Organ Donation Week gives us a chance to hear from some amazing people – here’s Sidney and Kelly’s story, father and daughter from Buckinghamshire. 💜

Working in partnership with the University of Reading, we have reached a UK-first milestone in our research into the treatment of osteoarthritis, showing long-term evidence of efficacy and safety with a minimally invasive treatment for a condition effecting millions of people across the UK. The GENESIS I trial, which has been running for six years, focuses on a procedure called Genicular Artery Embolisation (GAE) as a treatment for patients with mild to moderate osteoarthritis symptoms where conservative treatment, for example painkillers or physiotherapy has not been successful. Osteoarthritis affects nearly 9 million people in the UK. Similar to many conditions which present with chronic pain, it has far-reaching impacts on quality of life. It is a condition where the protective cartilage on the ends of the bones breaks down, causes problems moving the joint. Pain is caused by inflammation and the growth of new blood vessels. Painkillers can be used to treat mild cases, however surgery to replace the knee may be needed in severe cases. The procedure at the centre of the GENESIS study involves injecting tiny plastic beads - the size of a grain of sand - into the knee to block the blood vessels that inflame the tissue and cause pain. It involves positioning a plastic catheter tube into the abnormal blood vessels through a pinhole incision in the groin. X-rays are used to position the catheter into the arteries before the plastic beads are injected through it. A similar study in Japan found a 80% clinical success rate over a 3-year period. Treating 40 patients at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading, and following them for a 2-year period, the final paper for Genesis I, which contains the largest European dataset, and longest follow-up period for this type of treatment, shows it is safe and effective beyond the expected significant placebo time frame. It's a potential game changer for the treatment of osteoarthritis. It could reduce the number of patients needing knee replacement surgery, contribute towards reducing waiting lists and offer both the NHS and patients another way to tackle this condition. Professor Mark Little, Consultant Interventional Radiologist said, “Getting to this point has been years in the making. It’s extremely encouraging to see results showing this treatment is both safe, and potentially effective in treating what can be constant, and debilitating pain. “We're now focused on the next step towards making this an available treatment within the NHS. We are currently running the GENESIS 2 trial. Which is a large, randomised sham-controlled trial. We are currently halfway through treating the 110 patients to be included in the study. GENESIS 2 will further investigate the safety and efficacy of GAE in patients with mild to moderate knee Osteoarthritis. “Taking part in research gives patients access to ground-breaking treatment options, and it also helps to advance the treatment we can in time offer to all patients.”