Sunday September 24, 2006

Blood Bike September 23rd

Saturday, so as expected it was a busy day. My first call at 10:50am was to carry urgently required blood samples from Shepton Mallet to the pathology labs at Musgrove Hospital in Taunton. The NHS Treatment Centre at Shepton Mallet is an interesting place. It is run by a private company, UK Specialist Hospitals Ltd, that works in partnership with the local NHS trusts to provide surgical operations for NHS patients. There is no charge to the patients and the quality of care is reputed to be very high. The hospital is conscious that we are a charity providing a free of charge service and have promised us a donation at the end of the year to cover the work that we do for them. If only other private care providers in the area would do the same. I ride up my favourite road, Cheddar Gorge, to get to Shepton Mallet and then take the most obvious, but painfully slow, route to Taunton which takes me through the mystical (shabby IMHO!) town of Glastonbury.

In the afternoon at 3:00pm, thankfully after I have finished lunch, I get a call to take blood samples from Paulton Memorial Hospital to the Royal United Hospital in Bath. I have not been to either hospital before as they are covered by one of our other bikes. To my delight my trusty GPS takes me once again up Cheddar Gorge to get to Paulton.

At the hospital in Bath I am told by our coordinator to wait a few minutes so I can take another job. The blood bank at the hospital had earlier sent one of our riders out to another hospital in Bath with the wrong blood for a patient. Luckily this was spotted by the staff at the other end and the patient was never put at any risk. In over a year of riding the blood bike I have only ever known hospitals make mistakes twice and both of them happened this week. The job to deliver the correct blood is urgent to I make good progress through heavy Saturday shopper traffic in Bath by making the most of the bike's ability to cut through narrow gaps and pass long lines of stationary traffic. After a lovely right across the hills in the late afternoon sunshine I get home at 6:10pm.

Time on the road: 5h40m, Mileage: 142, NHS money saved: £100 (US$188)

Posted by mikebelch ( Sep 24 2006, 01:00:02 PM BST ) Permalink Comments [0]