It cost millions and held its first clinic last October. Six months on, Health Reporter LUCY STEPHENS discovers how York Hospital's new one-stop breast unit is benefiting from thousands of pounds raised by local people.

YOU can almost still smell the wet paint at York Hospital's £6.1 million new breast unit. Its corridors gleam, the examination rooms are beautifully spacious. There are two waiting rooms with comfortable chairs, four mammogram rooms, two ultrasound rooms, and extra offices for staff. Everything is spotless.

Staff at the unit are kept constantly busy with the number of women, and a small proportion of men, who come through its doors every week. Most of their work relates to breast cancer, with patients mainly referred there either by their GP or through breast screening on 50 to 70-year-olds.

But although staff are delighted with their new unit, they say funds raised locally - often by people who have themselves been touched by breast cancer - will help them make the service they offer even more comfortable for patients.

Macmillan breast care nurse Lynn Moffatt says: "It's very clinical at the moment.

"We want to make it a bit more personal, a bit more comfortable for women to come to.

"A lot of people who raise money have been touched by breast cancer in some way, either they've had it, or a family member or friend has."

Several local fundraisers have thrown their backing behind the breast unit, and so far more than £10,000 has been raised. Now staff are deciding on the best ways to spend the money so that breast patients can get the best possible care during their treatment.

One of their ideas is to buy a special camera, so women who have had reconstructive surgery can be photographed within the unit without having to trek across York Hospital.

Another is more homespun: simply to buy pictures to adorn the bare walls of the clinic so patients can feel a little less as though they are in hospital and a little more at home.

Dawn Clegg, last year's lady captain of York Golf Club, is one woman who feels strongly about the work done at the breast unit.

"My mother is a patient," she explains. Over the year the club has raised £1,607 for the unit, with a series of lunches, raffles and golfing challenges.

"It's very close to all of us in the ladies' section of York Golf Club," she says. "The help, support and encouragement we've had from the ladies has been phenomenal. I couldn't have done it without their support.

"This is part of the caring and environment. That means an awful lot to both the patient and their families when you're facing something like breast cancer."

Other contributors to the breast fund have been Browns of York and Helmsley, with various cosmetic evenings and fashion shows; Terrington Choir, who held a Christmas carol concert; Linda Wilkinson; Bootham beauty clinic face Etc; and York Hospital's theatre and anaesthetic staff, who raised money from a bike ride.

Stewart Nicholson, consultant surgeon at the breast unit, said: "I think we have one of the nicest breast units in the country.

"But what the health service really can't afford to provide are the finishing, human, personal touches to the unit, so it becomes less of a clinical area and more of a welcoming unit in which people will feel relaxed."

Facts and figures

THE breast unit picks up five to six new cancers a week through the screening programme.

It sees 44 new patients a week.

Sixty per cent of women who have had a mastectomy do not request reconstructive surgery.

About 150 women a year have a mastectomy at York Hospital.

The hospital has about 300 women breast cancer patients each year.

Updated: 10:43 Friday, March 17, 2006