Building award for Southend cancer centre
13 December 2015
Health Care
A centre that supports cancer patients throughout South Essex is the recipient of a prestigious award that recognises high standards in building design.
The Macmillan Information and Support Centre at Southend
University Hospital has been awarded a Macmillan Quality
Environment Mark (MQEM) for offering high standards of care for
people affected by cancer.
The award was launched in January 2010 by the charity Macmillan
Cancer Support and is the first in the UK that specifically
assesses how well buildings such as chemotherapy and palliative
units provide support and care to people affected by cancer.
Macmillan information and support manager, Friederike Englund
said: "We are thrilled to receive this prestigious award. We
couldn't have done it without the help of the staff and all our
volunteers. The work everyone does here is phenomenal and goes a
long way to helping us maintain high standards of care for people
affected by cancer."
The Macmillan Quality Environment Mark will help to ensure that
people affected by cancer are treated and supported in physical
environments of uniformly high quality.
The scheme is open to any healthcare providers from the public,
voluntary or private sectors that operate cancer care buildings. It
has been developed in collaboration with people living with cancer
and organisations including the Department of Health in
England.
To receive the award environments have to score highly in areas
such as use of space, comfort and atmosphere, personal and social
interaction and health and wellbeing as well as the quality of
users' experience. Consideration is given to such things as
the greeting people receive when they come to a centre, the use of
natural light and outdoor space, as well as the availability of
quiet, private rooms.