Working together to improve Orkney’s Health and Wellbeing – Radiography

Posted on:

April 2025

Working together to improve Orkney’s Health and Wellbeing

Spotlight: Radiography   

This feature on our Radiography Service is the latest of our regular series of patient information updates to put the spotlight on clinical services at NHS Orkney. As an organisation, we want to share with you and be open and transparent about how we are addressing the challenges we face in supporting you.

What do we do here in Orkney?

Radiography sees almost all of NHS Orkney’s patients who come to The Balfour as outpatients, inpatients and through our Emergency Department (ED), and many of those who visit the GP as well.  Our team deliver the general imaging and CT service 24 hours a day, seven days a week as an on-call service, ensuring we are available when there is an emergency, and when we are needed.

We cover a wide range of types of imaging, not just x-rays. We also have CT, Ultrasound, we use fluoroscopy for our orthopaedic patients and we will soon be delivering MRI in Orkney.  For a small team we see a lot of patients. We do still need some of our patients to travel to Aberdeen for imaging as whilst we can do a lot, we can’t deliver all imaging here in Orkney.

General X-ray

  • The provision of x-rays has been available for many years, however, in the past few years we have had some developments in the department. 

CT Scanning

  • CT has been available in Orkney now for just over a decade. We recently celebrated the anniversary, just ahead of a visit to The Balfour by the First Minister.
  • The CT team offer imaging for trauma, Oncology and stroke patients. The team are on call overnight for emergencies ensuring that our most vulnerable patients will have access to the imaging they need, when they need it.

Ultrasound

  • We have delivered Ultrasound for over two decades here in Orkney and now we scan all non-obstetric ultrasound here in Radiology and scan a wide range of patients.

What can you do to help us out?

  • We offer outpatient appointments for most of our patients and also see urgent and emergency patients. If you can’t make an appointment, please let us know and we can reschedule your appointment and offer the one you had to someone else so it isn’t wasted. We can lose up to 50 appointments a month across our different imaging areas from patients who don’t attend and don’t let us know. This means we aren’t able to offer slots to other patients who are waiting, and waste vital and valuable clinical time. We try to see our patients as soon as we can and have one of the lowest waiting times in Scotland for the imaging services we offer.
  • For our visiting services, such as MRI, we want to see as many patients as possible and if we can offer a cancellation, it will reduce peoples’ wait to get their diagnosis significantly.

How are we developing the service for Orkney?

  • As a department we are Dementia-Friendly and have worked with our Dementia Team to ensure all our staff are prepared to support those visiting us who are living with Dementia.
  • We now have a Radiography Advanced Practitioner in the department who is reporting some of our general imaging here in Orkney, meaning her expertise is available to our Clinicians and Nurse Practitioners.
  • The team is working on the Orthopaedic joint injection service with the Orthopaedic Team, developing the service where patients are being seen as outpatients in Radiology, rather than being admitted to theatre for the procedure.
    We are keen to support the development of our team and we also now have an Assistant Practitioner on the team who is able to support our Radiographers delivering the general x-ray imaging.
  • The CT Team have worked to bring cardiac imaging to Orkney for some of our patients, developing systems and procedures in conjunction with our Cardiology Consultant and Consultant Radiologists at NHS Grampian, to allow the examinations, that would have required patients to travel to Aberdeen, to be undertaken here in The Balfour.
  • The Ultrasound Team recognised the need for succession planning and planning for future developments and recruited one of our Radiographers to undertake ultrasound training in the department.
  • The team have brought Musculo Skeletal Ultrasound to Orkney, ensuring that we can work closely with colleagues in our Emergency Department, General Practice, Physiotherapy and Orthopaedics, to get early diagnosis and intervention for injuries and conditions that would previously have had to be sent away for imaging.
  • The Ultrasound Team were successful in a bid for an upgrade to the equipment to deliver a specific type of liver ultrasound scan called elastography, which will help in monitoring those living with liver disease here in Orkney rather than travelling away for the short scan.
  • The team are conscious that the environment for an ultrasound can be stressful, as can the reason for coming in for a scan in the first place. As such they have developed the environment of the scan rooms, from a simple darkened clinical room with dim lighting, to using room sprays and aurora lighting to create a relaxed, calming atmosphere, to improve the experience for patients

MRI

The provision of an MRI Scanner in Orkney has been provided by the North Imaging Alliance over the past few years, we saw the last visit in March of this year.

As part of our plan for MRI going forward the team put a bid to the Scottish Government with a plan to provide the service here in Orkney.

The bid was successful and we have secured funding to run a test of change with a relocatable MRI unit at The Balfour. We hope to see the majority of patients who require an MRI scan here at The Balfour, however for some specialist scans, some patients will need to travel away for their scan.

We aim to have the scanner in Orkney by the end of May 2025, to commence scanning in early June. The scanner will remain with us until the end of March 2026. During the course of this year, we will be developing an options appraisal with the aim of securing a long-term solution for our community in Orkney.