20th November 2018
Belfast Trust is delighted to announce that the first Harvey’s Gang Tour took place on Friday with a view to this being rolled out across the Trust.
On Friday 16th November James McGleenan was given a tour of the labs in Belfast City Hospital. James is 11 years old and a haemophilia patient who was keen to see what happens when his blood is sent for testing. Biomedical Scientists on site were able to show James the tests they perform on his blood and he was presented with his own lab coat and goody bag.
Shauna McAuley, Governance and Quality Manager, said “This was a great opportunity for James to find out what happens to his samples after they are taken in clinic and see the processes involved to get him the right results.”
“It was also an amazing opportunity for our staff to meet a patient in person. Although we are trained that a sample represents a patient, there is nothing like looking into the eyes of a patient, especially a child, to drive that message home, and show that our biomedical scientists have patients at the heart of their work every day.”
“James was the first Harvey’s Gang member in the Belfast Trust and we will now roll this out across all our laboratories. We welcome any patients who feel they would benefit from a tour to find out what happens to their samples and how we get the right result for them.”
Harvey’s Gang started in 2013 at the Haematology and Blood Transfusion Laboratory at Worthing Hospital, part of Western Sussex NHS Trust. Harvey Buster Baldwin, an inquisitive 6 year old asked for a tour of labs to see his own blood analysed as part of his treatment for acute myeloid leukaemia. Sadly, Harvey passed away in 2014 but his legacy lives on through the charity bearing his name. They aim to have 70 Harvey’s Gang tours in place across 70 Trusts in the UK by the end of the year.