Healthcare Heroes: Caoimhe's pride at 'making a difference'

Originally from Derry she discusses what attracted her to come and work in Fermanagh and the pride she feels in knowing her work makes a difference.

What motivated you to pursue a career at South West Acute Hospital?

I’m a blow-in! Derry Girl by birth, Fermanagh Girl by choice. Having lived away from home for some years, I was offered a permanent position in the Erne Hospital. Once I saw the beauty that Fermanagh had to offer and the people in the community, I knew that it was just the start of my career here.

We have a modern, spacious, state-of-the-art laboratory in SWAH that most acute hospitals would love to have.

Could you share a significant challenge you've faced in your role and how you overcame it to provide quality healthcare services? 

Like many of our colleagues, the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic will be remembered forever.

Working in the laboratory, we treat every sample as potentially hazardous, but this was unlike anything we had encountered before. We had different measures in place to ensure the safety of staff, including different processes for preparing patient samples for testing in a specialised room, wearing additional PPE for processing specimens and having separate equipment.

Social distancing became as important in the workplace as in the home. We had to reduce footfall through the laboratory by working in smaller teams and altering our work patterns to allow us to be fully prepared if a member of staff became unwell and the other members of that team had to self-isolate.

Despite the challenges, there was a great deal of personal satisfaction in using our scientific knowledge and research skills to investigate the disease to help our medical colleagues save the lives of patients. We are a relatively small team in the laboratory and the camaraderie among work colleagues helped us through this difficult time.

How do you believe your role contributes to the well-being and recovery of patients within our community?

“At the heart of healthcare". That’s our professional hashtag, our mantra. And it’s true. Behind every test we perform is a patient, and every patient matters.

As one of the broadest areas of modern science, biomedical science focuses on the complexity of the human body and underpins much of modern medicine. The pathology department plays a vital role in providing a range of diagnostics within the laboratory setting.

Our teams are involved with 70 per cent of all NHS patient diagnoses and with approximately 95 per cent of all clinical pathways dependant on a pathology result.

We provide a full seven-day service, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, as injuries or rapid changes in body composition can mean patients require immediate, potentially life-saving, treatment.

My role as a Biomedical Scientist is to ensure the results that leave the lab are a true reflection of the level of that particular substance in the patient. We are the “hidden” service providing doctors and healthcare professionals with the vital information they need to assess, diagnose and treat patients with appropriate care or medication.

You may not always see us, but we are always there for you!

Can you highlight a particular patient interaction or medical achievement that you are particularly proud of, and why?

I was involved in the launch the Harvey’s Gang Tours initiative at SWAH. Harvey's Tours invites children with long-term health conditions and needle phobia to become trainee biomedical scientists for the day and tour the laboratory with family members.

It is a great initiative that demystifies the process of where blood samples are analysed, helping children and their families better understand the process their bloods go through. It can be quite a stressful and traumatic time for children and their families as they can spend a lot of time waiting for blood results, so opening up the laboratory to them can help them understand what happens and hopefully help understand their conditions a bit more.

It is also a great opportunity for the staff within the laboratory to meet patients and allows us all to help make the department and service more patient-focused. As laboratory staff, we rarely have direct patient contact, so it is such a pleasure to play our part in improving patient experience through the Harvey’s tours. The tours serve as a great reminder to us as scientists that every sample we process represents a patient in need of our help.

We are very excited to make a positive difference to children’s experience of hospital visits and hope that we spark their interest in science too.

Unfortunately, once Covid–19 hit we had to suspend any laboratory visits, but we are hoping to relaunch later this year so watch for updates on the Western Trust website www.westerntrust.hscni.net or digital media channels.

How do you ensure the delivery of compassionate and effective care in your specific healthcare discipline?

In our work we don’t get to see the patient's faces, we only see names. We often don’t get to know why a patient has had blood tests ordered, we only see the sample. But each sample is a patient, and every patient has hopes, fears, family, and friends. We don’t get to see a patient recover and leave hospital, but when we stop receiving their bloods we hope for the best.

There are always interesting cases as every patient is an individual, so the same medical condition can affect different people in different ways. So although we have little direct patient contact, we still get to see their progress through their results on-screen.

We are a team within a team. Every part of the healthcare system is reliant on the other. We take inspiration from our patient-facing colleagues who we get to work with to provide the best service for all service users.

What aspect of your work do you find most rewarding, and how does it resonate with your personal values and mission?

I feel a tremendous sense of pride knowing that I have made a difference.

The vast majority of people working in pathology don’t do it for the money, we do it because of the connection with the healthcare system and what it strives for and its reason for being.

How do you manage the demands of your job, and what strategies do you employ to ensure exceptional healthcare service delivery?

Every day is an opportunity to make a difference, to learn and to grow.

In order to protect public safety, anyone using or practicing with the Biomedical Scientist title in the UK must be Health & Care Professions Council’s (HCPC) registered. We must prove that we remain “fit to practice” over the course of our careers in order to remain on the professional register.

As we ultimately have the ability to affect patient care, we must undergo rigorous professional training, competency assessment and undertake Continuing Professional Development (CPD), to ensure our knowledge and skills are up to date.

As a biomedical scientist, we need good knowledge of our discipline but also a variety of different practical and analytical skills, such as working with many different computer software programmes as well as maintaining laboratory equipment.

We have to manage our workload effectively in order to meet professional goals without impacting day-to-day activities.

Have there been any mentors or colleagues who have significantly influenced your practice, and in what way?

I couldn’t not mention our specimen reception team. They are fundamental to the services provided by the laboratory. They are our engine room who provide support to the Biomedical Scientists, the Clinical Scientists and the Medical staff within Pathology.

We trust and respect the team and acknowledge the important role they play. The team is full of enthusiastic individuals who take responsibility for what they do, always going above and beyond to support colleagues and centre patient care.

Although the team are not patient-facing, they are patient-focused. They place the patient first in everything that they do. Our team work diligently to ensure that the samples are treated with respect and in a timely manner because they know that any limitations of their operations will impact the integrity of the procedures performed further down the process. This highlights how they both care about the people they work with, but also care about the patients and communities we serve.

What are your aspirations for the future, and how do you envision the evolution of your role within South West Acute Hospital?

As a woman in STEM and a STEM Ambassador, I would love to bring more attention to scientists who are in the minority and who remain underrepresented. There needs to be a framework for supporting and retaining diverse individuals at all levels. If we are going to see changes that support women and scientists from ethnic minority backgrounds and shatter glass ceilings, then we need to be at the decision-making tables as we are in the best position to inform what is needed.

It’s also important to recognise and acknowledge that Pathology services need to be provided with the tools to meet the growing challenges and demands that we face. These challenges include financial pressures, increased demand of a growing and ageing population meaning more patients require biopsies and blood tests, advances in cancer medicine, and the spread of genetic testing and precision medicine. In SWAH we also face the geographical challenges associated with rural healthcare, logistic challenges of sample transport and retention and recruitment of staff.

Pathology services need to increase in line with the need. We have an excellent, modern, clinically-led pathology service in SWAH that I would love to see supported and expanded to help resolve some of these challenges.

How do you believe your efforts contribute to the overall excellence and advancement of healthcare services in our local community?

At the end of the day we repeat our mantra “at the heart of healthcare” so that amid the relentless workload, we continue to “again, but better” when faced with new challenges to ensure we don’t lose sight of who we work for.