THE SETTING could be a luxury hotel lounge, complete with reclining leather chairs, discreetly placed writing and computing areas, restful paintings and decorative floral arrangements.
Yet the clientele, far from being here to enjoy a welcome break, are awaiting news – for some traumatic news, for others a further chapter in a long and difficult battle conquering or living with long-term illness.
A unique approach to helping cancer patients cope better in a leading treatment centre in the Netherlands has seen traditional waiting areas such as hard seats, blank walls, harsh lighting and continual bustle – familiar terrain in busy hospitals and polyclinics everywhere – transformed into an oasis of calm and comfort.
Here is an environment where quiet and tranquillity is all prevailing, the sound of phones ringing and footsteps running is absent, colours are soft, lighting muted and cheerful landscapes of cows grazing and Dutch sunsets have replaced big wall clocks and billboards.
Amsterdam’s VU University Medical Center’s recently opened cancer care facility combines the most modern examination techniques and shortest diagnosis time span yet achieved in the Netherlands, with a non-hospital waiting environment deliberately created to relax patients.
A co-ordinated diagnosis and treatment plan for up to 24 different types of cancer can be delivered within 48 hours of a first attendance for 80 per cent of patients arriving at the new cancer centre.
A multidisciplinary appointment system where all involved specialists are available on site during their visit for consultations is the key to greater efficiency and far less waiting time, so optimal action can be taken.
Instead of balancing nervously on the edge of uncomfortable hospital furniture waiting for their appointment, often after exhausting periods being sent through a labyrinth of hospital buildings for tests and earlier consultations in other departments, patients can settle back and relax in the lounges at the centre.
Patients in all age groups and states of health can catch up on e-mails, while others, weather permitting, wander out onto a roof garden to admire the view of Amsterdam below. Yet more stretch out on the reclining cream-coloured leather armchairs and snooze. And those who want to leave the centre while awaiting their appointment are given a bleeper.
Consulting rooms are equally restful, with illuminated, ceiling-high glass panels looking like abstract shrubbery. The 23-bed wing, where chemotherapy and other treatments take place, has a bower of green leafy treetops on the ceiling above, so patients have something to look at as they lie flat. Each bed has a TV and computer terminal at arm’s length.
There is a coffee shop and a lifestyle centre where a dietitian and physiotherapist put together tailor-made programmes of healthy eating and exercise. Next door is the beauty salon, where the theme is “look good, feel better”.
“The old clinic was dark and dusty; here it is light and bright, and because it is a much nicer environment you notice how patients are responding positively and are a lot more relaxed,” says Dr Sonja Zweegman, a specialist who was involved in developing the new centre. “Hearing the bad news is always going to be hard, but when the environment is more secure and relaxing, it does make a difference,” she adds.
Retired international water consultant Gijs Kok, who lived for a time in Dublin 30 years ago, told how he has been coming regularly to the hospital where his blood cancer is being treated.
“You never want to be coming to a place like this,” he points out, “but the new centre is a big improvement and people do prefer a decent comfortable armchair and some privacy. I am doing okay and making plans to go to Kerry with my family and climb Mount Brandon with a good Irish friend in 2012.”
Prof Henk Verheul, director of the cancer centre and a leading oncologist, adds: “What is extraordinary for such a busy polyclinic is the quiet, achieved with soundproofing and a great design, so that the busy administrative areas are completely separate at the back of the building.”
A separate stairs for staff connects the various floors, ensuring the lounge patient areas are kept free of noise and away from the sight of doctors and nurses rushing about.
Patients’ ideas were widely used in the concept for the new centre and researchers even travelled with them from their homes to the hospital, experiencing their frustrations and anxiety on their journeys.
It was noted that delayed public transport, parking difficulties, searching for various departments and waiting their turn often added great stress and anxiety to already ill people.
“It was a challenge to be able to bring care to the patient instead of the other way round, but we have achieved that,” says Zweegman. “It makes perfect sense to have all the expertise involved in care and treatment together, so that time is saved and optimal therapy choices and approaches are worked out without delay.”
The centre also has streamlined its administrative and laboratory queuing procedures for biopsies and other tests, helped by mathematician Prof Ger Koole, who conceived faster, more efficient logistics and procedures, “creating much more efficiency but without increasing their costs”.
This ultra-modern cancer care diagnosis and treatment centre is proud of the fact that it all came about without a single euro being received in state money. With strict limits on public expenditure in recent years, there is no money available for new hospital building programmes. The €19 million needed for the centre was raised by a public lottery game run over a number of years.
Now fundraisers plan a follow-up Vrienden Loterij (friends’ lottery) to build and equip a centre for early diagnosis of cancer. More than 95,000 people are diagnosed with cancer annually in the Netherlands and the numbers will grow as the population ages in years to come.
Verheul is optimistic that many forms of cancer, especially when diagnosed early and treated with targeted therapy, can be arrested and treated adequately and the quality of life of patients during and after treatment will continue to improve in future.
