The Walton Centre
Thank you for your comments and we were sincerely sorry to learn of your experience at The Walton Centre when your partner attended for his MRI scan. We are sincerely sorry that your experience differed somewhat to the previous patient centred care that you had received.
Our policy relating to asking all patients if they are pregnant before undergoing procedures involving ionising radiation and MRI adheres to national legislation. This is because certain amounts of radiation can be harmful to foetuses in utero. We believe asking all people who are having their abdomen imaged/scanned in this way, regardless of gender, is the least intrusive way of ensuring it is safe to proceed. We do, however, appreciate from your comments and experience, the difficulties and distressed this caused to both you and your partner at the time. We would like to assure you that we will feed your comments back to the Radiology Management Team to share with staff, to ensure they learn from this and to always mindful when explaining to patients and their family members to reasons for asking this question, especially if patients are showing signs of confusion.