CANCER patients have had to be interviewed in a nursing sister's car because there is no suitable permanent office for the breast care service at Burnley General Hospital.

Other sensitive discussions have taken place in busy corridors and waiting rooms, while other patients mill about close by.

Today the chairman of a health watchdog group described the situation as appalling and said he could not believe a permanent office for the breast unit, which deals with mastectomy patients, was not available in the sprawling hospital.

"Every manager seems to have a comfortable suite of offices," said Frank Clifford, chairman of Burnley, Pendle and Rossendale Community Health Council. "I can't believe there isn't somewhere that can't be tidied up, given a lick of paint and used to give these women the privacy they deserve and should have.

"The sister who runs the unit often has to find a room within out-patients to find somewhere to talk to women patients. On occasions she's had to take a woman to her own car in the car park and talked to her there. She's talked to women in a corridor or in a waiting room with people passing up and down. "It's appalling. She needs a regular station apportioned to her and the service."

Mr Clifford also said the lack of space was holding back the work of a support group to help the women.

The CHC has called for an urgent meeting with the consultant and managers to try and solve the accommodation problem.

Mr Clifford said CHC members who visited the breast care service were horrified by the situation.

The hospital's surgical services manager, Joe Deegan, in a letter to the CHC, said: "Part of the difficulty in accommodating the service arises from the manner in which the service has grown under the impetus of enthusiastic and knowledgable staff who have continued to develop this service to patients without being able to wait for accommodation infrastructures to 'catch up'."

Mr Deegan added: "The initiative to concentrate as much breast surgery as possible on Ward 24 is working quite well. Pre-operative assessment facilities were based in an area previously occupied by the ward day area.

"Although this space has been set aside to deal with two patients simultaneously, it is rarely used in this way so that patients' privacy is maintained."

Again we are into the difficulty of making the best use of available accommodation in areas intended for other uses."

But Mr Clifford said privacy was of the upmost importance and the situation of two patients being seen in the same area should never arise.

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