Our Radiography team has been named ‘Team of the Year’ for the London region at the Society of Radiographer’s awards, held on Wednesday 8 November.

The awards recognise those who go above and beyond for patients; and are passionate about improving services.

Our Radiography team has transformed their service, including introducing a remote reporting team which helped reduce a backlog of over 60,000 patients awaiting x-ray results to zero over the last year. The team now report the results of most x-rays in an hour, with all reports completed within 24 hours.

Dhrusha Jethwa, our Lead Reporting Radiographer, said: “We have moved in leaps and bounds from where we used to be with a large backlog of patients. It’s a huge achievement and something we are extremely proud of.

“We were delighted to receive the Team of the Year award in recognition of this. We’re really grateful to our forward-thinking managers and colleagues who helped us push boundaries when we first started to look at introducing a remote reporting service in 2017. We couldn’t have predicted how valuable this would be, with the Covid-19 pandemic starting in 2020.”

Introducing a remote service, where reporting radiographers deliver x-ray reports from home, offered the team more flexible working. In return, they were challenged to deliver a higher level of productivity.

They achieved that and more, which also allowed them to adapt seamlessly to a new way of working when the pandemic hit in March 2020.

The service today runs 8am to midnight, seven days a week. They also provide ‘hot’ reporting (out of hours) to A&E and GPs benefit from electronic reports usually within one hour of an x-ray taking place.

Providing more flexibility to staff has also reduced absence rates and improved recruitment and retention.

Dhrusha added: “Expensive outsourcing for reporting is a thing of the past, and we’re proud of our strong relationships with frontline colleagues. As radiographers, we’re also ready to support clinically when needed.”