Conquest's endoscopy unit undergoing refurbishment

Structural alterations started last week.

New offices, a consultation room and a waiting room will be built over the next six weeks, which will improve the privacy and dignity of patients and enable the endscopy unit to become a bowel cancer screening unit.

Bowel cancer is the third most common cancer in men and the second most common in women in the UK, affecting around 34,000 people each year.

Screening enables it to be detected at an early stage when there is a better chance of a person being successfully treated.

Susannah Peters, gastro-enterology clinical nurse manager, said: "The work will make the environment more suitable for patients and improve all aspects of their experience.

"It will modernise the department and enable us to move towards becoming a bowel cancer screening unit, which will be a very positive addition for patients.

"There will be a new waiting room built at the front of the department and a new consultation room to make things more convenient for patients, as well as new secretary and consultant offices which will make things better for the staff."

The endoscopy department is a diagnostic and therapeutic unit which carries out procedures using an instrument called an endoscope to see inside the body.