Boiiiinnng! Donor services boss jumps for pastures greener

In 2008 NHS Blood & transplant took on a new Director of Blood Donation, Andy Young. Here's Andy.



Andy's previous experience was as a top boss at the O2 Arena. Here's the O2 Arena.



This certainly rose a few eyebrows - and sneers - among the writers of this blog. It is a worrying sign when NHSBT management think that a great candidate for a director is one from the commercial sector, with no experience of working in the Blood Service or even the NHS. What's more the O2 Arena is hardly one of the all-time great successes of the business world...

All signs pointed to yet another clueless chief. Sighs and headshakes all round from staff.

At the start of June 2009 the bitter ramblings of even the most cynical staff members have been trumped - just one year after settling into his office, barely time to warm the chill off his leather seat, Andy Young is off to a new, shinier job. Andy obviously favours the 'jack of all trades' approach to his CV, deciding now to try his hand at (or should that be dip his toe into...) the 2012 Olympics. Not exactly the poster boy for continuity!

If Andy Young wants to really make an impact as part of 2012 he's probably best off stepping out from behind the scenes and joining the athletes in the long jump or the high jump.



It's bad enough to have directors brought in from the private sector, where they have honed their skills of brutality and cold-heartedness, and touted as the perfect choice to manage a service based on altruism. But at the very least those working in the upper echelons of NHSBT need to have a passing interest in or concern for blood donation and transfusion. Andy Young's selfish desertion demonstrates that he had nothing of the sort. He must have been idly flicking through the job pages for a few months at least. Or was it ever anything more to him than a stop gap?

Andy Young welcomes prospective NHSBT director hopefuls via Hays management recruitment agency. Probably written by his secretary...

Anyone who felt the burning passion that some of us feel for the work we do would not be able to simply walk out the door at the whiff of something bigger and better in the shallow way that he has done.

Money well spent, bosses?

Health and safety reps beat bosses' no chairs rule

The unpopular OTP ('Operational Transformation Project') working pattern imposed clunkily by NHSBT management on blood collection teams a few years ago has many flaws according to donor carer staff. One which caused great health concern, with a increasing rise in occupational health referrals, was the attempted removal of chairs for staff from donor sessions.





Union health and safety reps from across the staffside worked together and fought hard against this ruling, using the law as a weapon. A great coup was achieved by getting in the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) to carry out an inspection. The HSE is an under-funded body that rarely visits workplaces.

The HSE report released in March this year fully backed up what health and safety reps had been arguing. Following this blow to their authority management had no choice, in the light of hard evidence, but to accept the findings of the HSE's report and replace chairs. This is a fantastic victory achieved by union reps that will benefit collection teams everywhere.

Health and safety law can be a valuable tool for workers. Over the years union activists have pushed to make it rule in our favour. The fight to improve working conditions goes on constantly. At the extreme end unsafe working can kill and make people seriously ill. Each year more people die through their work than from war.

The ILO (UN International Labour Organisation) estimates that 337 million accidents occur on the job annually, while the number of people suffering from work-related diseases is close to 2 million. These mistakes amount to approximately 2.3 million deaths each year, with 650,000 of them due to hazardous substances – double the number of a few years ago.

Don't forget Workers Memorial Day, 28th April every year across the world. It is a day to remember those who have been killed by work, but also to fight for better health and safety in the present, as reps in NHSBT have been doing.

Night shifts bad for workers' health - Supercentre runs 24 hours

It was reported in today's news that 37 women in Denmark have won the right to compensation after it was proven that working night shifts long-term was linked to them developing breast cancer.



This link was suspected as long ago as 2001. Read more in a report on the research done into it here.

Cancer is not the only health concern around night working. Humans are not nocturnal (we are diurnal, the opposite of nocturnal). Night shift work is believed to cause disturbed sleep, fatigue and digestive problems. There are possible increased risks of diabetes. Scientific studies have shown that sleep disruption can cause the body to produce less melatonin, an important sleep regulating hormone. And accident rates are significantly higher on the night shift than during the day.

This leaflet informs employers that workers are at more risk of accidents when working at night than during the day.

Knowing this, it is a shameful and dangerous step backwards for National Blood Service bosses to decide to centralise blood processing and reduce the number of regional labs. At these regional labs where local blood collections were received, the processing work could be completed in a day, and the workers stop at 11pm. At the Filton supercentre which replaces them, where all blood for the whole of the Midlands and South-West has to be processed, the work rolls non-stop 24 hours round the clock. Now, as a result of this restructuring, unhealthy night shift working is being inflicted onto more workers. It doesn't seem too much to ask when you work in the NHS, helping to save lives, that your employers won't make choices that could shorten your own!

Do you have to work night shifts? Does a friend or family member? Take care - here are some health tips for shift or night time workers and advice from the Health & Safety Executive.

Furious letter from Canadian blood service workers union

Last month the Nova Scotia Union of Public & Private Employees (NSUPE) sent a storming letter to the Canadian Blood Service CEO on behalf of their very frustrated members working in blood collection. Their experiences of the high pressure piled onto them as a result of poor management decisions are shared by donor carers this side of the pond.

Click here to read the letter in full and the response from CBS bosses.

Minutes from Leeds Scrutiny Committee regarding NBS strategy

Leeds Scrutiny Committee, which examines proposals for changes in public services and resources, recently held a meeting which was attended by union stewards representing the NBS staff, and management and HR representing the directors and their strategy of proposed lab closures.

The Committee was extremely angry at the way that they felt that they had been left out of the consultation process until all the decisions on the future of Leeds blood centre had been made.



You can read the minutes HERE.

Article on restructuring of US transfusion service

NY Times article about reorganisation of the Red Cross blood tranfusion service in North America. Apparently regulators have found that the transfusion service in the USA has numerous problems - one of the causes being that they are too big, and costs of re-organisation are running far in excess of what was predicted...

Outcome of the Blood Service strategic review

The review of the NBS restructuring strategy is now complete and these are the outcomes.

The outcry from hospitals, staff and the public at the dangerous and stupid proposals has meant that in the north and south-east, the board have been forced to scrap the idea of supercentres. One excellent victory that we can claim is that the Newcastle centre is now to remain fully open, and Sheffield also keeps many more functions.



But the axe still hangs over essential labs at centres across the country.

From the north and south-east of England, processing labs are still earmarked for closure at Leeds and Tooting, and testing labs are planned to be shut at Brentwood, Leeds and Tooting.

NBS RCI reference labs, which crossmatch blood for patients with rare or reactive blood types, are critical to have closely linked with hospitals in the area. Despite this, NBS directors still think that they can get away with closing RCI labs in Manchester, Southampton, Cambridge, to cut costs.

The NBS has also taken advice that it should consider ending its role in antenatal screening by 2011. This will cost more jobs, and will eventually cost the wider NHS as well. The NBS is able to do this testing at a fraction of what it costs hospitals to do it themselves. If they in fact extended their involvement in antenatal screening, they could create more income for NHS Blood and Transplant, as well as lightening the load on hospital budgets. It seems the word foresight is missing from the NBS management dictionary.

Interestingly the revised proposed strategy will cost a predicted 600 jobs, in addition to those slashed in the midlands and south-west consolidation. Before the review the figure of 600 applied to job losses in total across the whole country. It should also be noted that bosses want to cut more jobs in the extremely understaffed collection teams - at a time when collected donations are way below target.

Meanwhile in the midlands and south-west zone, directors are desperately clinging to the supercentre model, reluctant to face the humiliation of abandoning their flagship Filton supercentre venture. This was purposely left out of the review as bosses knew McKinsey & Co. would advise against such a drastic cut, as has been proven in the other two regions. Large processing labs from Birmingham, Southampton and Plymouth are still destined to be packed off to this white elephant. Directors also want to inexplicably uproot donor typing and patient screening from Colindale, and the national Cord Blood Bank from Edgware, to Filton in Bristol. The only apparent reason for this is an attempt to further justify that the shiny hangar is not going to be a terrible waste of resources.

Now that the factual support is crumbling, we have to push on campaigning against centralisation. No decision on the fate of our health services should ever be made based on keeping someone’s CV unsoiled.

Thanks to all campaign supporters for your valuable help so far - we’re getting there, and reason is on our side - let’s keep on fighting!

Strategy review underway and everything to play for

The NBS centralisation strategy is currently undergoing review by the consultant agency McKinsey & Co. McKinsey are well-known for being the government's favourite choice of consultants in cases of NHS reorganisation (a.k.a. cuts), as this story illustrates, and boast Enron amongst their past clients...

Well-prepared NBS staff reps have been meeting with McKinsey to put forward our comprehensive arguments against the strategy. Here is one document for submission, which details not only the defensive case but suggests better alternative future directions for the NBS (link also added to links section on right of page).

The review alone is no guarantee that the restructuring plans will be stopped, so supporters can still help by contacting the media, who can help to raise awareness, or your city council, who can intervene if they feel they have not been properly consulted about what the closure of local labs will mean for hospitals.

This link will take you to a page where you can find your local Public and Patient Involvement Forum. This is another way for NHS users to formally get involved in debating plans for health service reconfigurations. Please send a copy of the document above to your area's PPI Forum.

Management aggression to Donor Services staff

A now long-running attitude of aggression from NBS management to Donor Services staff (such as the collection teams) has recently worsened, with a letter from widely disliked DS Director Richard Fry.

The letter in question

In it he refers to a number of 'non-compliances' noted by the MHRA, a regulatory body which gives the Blood Service our licence to practise, on their last round of inspections. These fall into 2 camps - 'major' and 'other'.

Richard Fry comments on 3 small 'Good Manufacturing Practice' failures by collection teams, while carefully avoiding any mention of the management non-compliances (including their handling of change) which the MHRA picked up on. The truth is that it is these top-level errors which are the 'major' problems, and the threat to our licence, while the issues needing attention by Donor Services staff definitely come under the category of 'other'.

The tone of the letter is unacceptably threatening. Richard Fry warns heavily that action will be taken against those who fail to comply with procedure in future. He claims that although these points were noted at one particular site, there is no reason to assume the same mistakes are not rife across the service.

Many of us when starting to work for the NBS were told that this was an employer which encouraged a 'no blame' culture. The NBS 'Mission and Values' - now almost abandoned as an idea behind the organisation - talked about looking for solutions together. This is far from Richard Fry's current unhealthy iron rule of scaring staff into obedience. This letter is just one more example, for a growing pile, of how Blood Service management disrespect and harrass the underappreciated staff, week in, week out.

If you work in Donor Services and would like to anonymously have a moan about Richard Fry's unfair attacks, please feel free to use the comments section below. Your colleagues working in the labs and other NHS staff need (and would be interested) to hear your views.


The hardworking face of the National Blood Service

Top NBS strategy man's head rolls

NBS staff have been musing at the surprise news that Chief Executive Martin Gorham would take early retirement last month.

Following almost 40 years in the NHS and nine years as Chief Executive of the National Blood Authority, and more recently NHSBT, Martin Gorham will be stepping down as Chief Executive at the end of July. Having completed the first phase of the development of NHSBT since its inception in October 2005, Martin has decided that now is an appropriate time to retire.

I would like to offer my thanks, and those of the NHSBT Board, to Martin for his years of outstanding commitment to the NHS in general and to the Blood Service in England in particular.

Bill Fullagar
Chairman

13th July 2007

On first hearing this is an unusual development. It certainly points to weakness and division within the Board of Directors. This is a strange time for one of our bosses to choose to jump ship, right in the middle of a supposedly flagship modernisation drive. Why would he not choose to hang around and soak up the praise from the Department of Health for a job well done at the end of it all?
Clearly the directors have been having disagreements, and some kind of internal power struggle which has caused Gorham to either offer to step down, or be pushed out...


NBS workers in Birmingham wave a tearful goodbye to their dear leader

On top of the already good news about the strategy review, this points out again how in the face of widespread opposition, the policy-makers are struggling to show a united front. If we pull out all the stops to work together, we have a great chance to influence the plans for the Blood Service from here on. We will keep up the pressure on the rest of the Board and the new Chief Executive Clive Ronaldson. By being organised as NBS workers and as service users, we will give them no choice but to properly consult with us.

Management announce review of strategy!

Following the Board meeting on July 5th, which NBS union reps lobbied once again, Chairman Bill Fullager released this letter to staff on July 10th.

Letter to staff

Dear colleagues,

As you know, NHSBT has made considerable progress in a number of areas since the NHSBT strategy was launched last November. The construction of Filton (on time and on budget), the increase in appointments for blood donors and the record numbers of organs available for transplantation are all tangible examples of this progress.

Given the importance of the service strategy to both patients and the NHS, and in the light of our discussions, with customers and colleagues over the past six months, the NHSBT Board has decided to hold a review of the assumptions underpinning the strategy and its planned changes. This review will be led by Clive Ronaldson, in his new role as interim managing director of the NBS.

The Board remains committed to the vision and set out in the service strategy announced last November. At the same time, we have acknowledged and listened to concerns expressed and issues raised by staff and customers about aspects of these plans. In instigating this review, the Board is seeking to ensure that proposed changes will deliver the greatest benefits to patients. Where the review demonstrates that changes to the strategy are warranted, these will be made.

This means that although some changes in the early phases of the NHSBT change programme will continue as planned, fundamental developments - such as changes to aspects of the current configuration of processing and testing facilities - will not begin until the review is complete.

You will, clearly, have questions about the review and its implications for you and your site. This decision has only just been made and we wanted to make you aware of developments as soon as possible. We are currently confirming the terms of the review and how it will work, in discussion with staff representatives, and will be in a position to give you further details, for example on the timescale, over the coming weeks.

In the meantime, we welcome your views. If you have any immediate queries, please talk to your line manager or send them to us via Connect.

With best wishes,

Bill Fullagar
Chairman
10 July 2007

This is a massive breakthrough for the campaign! Until now the directors have flatly refused to consider any change to their proposals, no matter who from or how sensible. They have felt untouchable. For them to now put the brakes on and admit they are ready to think again about even small parts of the plans means the opposition is reaching a level that they cannot ignore. It can be no coincidence that this letter comes just after staff-side beginning steps for a ballot on industrial action. Bosses have seriously underestimated the staff's willingness to be pushed around and see the Blood Service they are proud of fall into a messy decline in the name of 'savings'.

With this knowledge to spur us on now is the time to carry on campaigning at full speed. Service users and patients still need a bigger say in the running of the NBS. This review shows that we can make sure that the policy-makers have no choice but to involve us all.

It's far from over! The future is still unwritten.

Invitation to the NBS Board Meeting 05/07/07

The National Blood Service Board of Directors meets today (Thursday 5th July) at the Bio Products Laboratory (BPL), Dagger Lane, Elstree, Hertfordshire, WD6 3BX.


You're paying for their buffet!

Until recently they preferred more central meeting points but lately this venue in the hard-to-reach backwaters of the commuter belt is their favourite. Less opportunity for embarrassing scenes of angry health workers.

Union reps will be attending from mid-morning to push on with efforts to stop the march of drastic reconfiguration. If you are in the area, you can demonstrate your support for the NBS staff, but even more excitingly, the Board meetings are legally 'public', so you could drop in and ask them to pull you up a chair...

An attack on public services

The NHSBT management need encouragement to be honest about the future of the NBS as a public institution. Year by year commercialisation creeps into the Blood Service, and associated organisations like the Bio Products Laboratory. Managing Director Peter Garwood was questioned by a rep on a recent visit to a centre, on whether the NBS planned to sell off its in-house transport wing to private contractors. He admitted that this had not been ruled out as an option.

Profit-seeking private firms are like vultures circling the NHS, and whenever they make inroads, they destroy the service for patients and staff alike. Look at ward cleaning nowadays for example, or the chaos in the provision of oxygen to patients. This vital lifeline was sold to a US corporation with a dodgy financial record, and within weeks a woman had died when her oxygen failed to be delivered in time. Opposing privatisation is not only an ethical matter, it makes sense for the safety and wellbeing of those whose lives hang in the balance.

This restructuring strategy is dressed up as modernisation, but it is a warning sign for future dangerous steps backwards. Centralisation is recognised as one of the early stages in the move towards privatisation. NBS staff are well aware of this, and like health workers everywhere, oppose it. We want to protect the integrity of our Blood Service so that we can all rely on it in the future.

The plans roll into practice - worse shifts for less money!

The first stage of the strategy involves Birmingham and Southampton donor testing labs closing in December 2007 and their work transferring down to Bristol. This will be the current Southmead site as the supercentre at Filton is still mud and girders. It is madness to expect a lab already operating at full capacity to take on two extra centres' workload. The staff will suffer the brunt of the effects of this overstretch.



There is a shortage of state-registered bio-medical scientists at Southmead. This will create problems when taking holidays or covering sickness and training requirements.
Unions say the proposed new shift patterns are seriously flawed. In-keeping with all of this strategy there is contradiction, waste of labour and lack of solid contingency planning. Illogical deadlines will cause periods of intense pressure followed by ‘dead time’.
Bristol testing staff will face many more early starts, which could be avoided if directors properly consulted staff-side about best working patterns. There is little flexibility available for parents or those reliant on public transport. This also comes at a time when health workers’ payments for Unsocial Hours are under threat. Unions believe NBS management may be trying to sidestep Agenda for Change protection of Unsocial Hours payments, as the wording describing an interim transition period says ‘existing arrangements continue undisturbed’.

It is important that the views of experienced health staff are listened to at this point, as the progress in the Midlands and South-West zone will be a template for the rest of the country. Bristol testing must not be railroaded into an unsuitable or unworkable shift system.

Here is a resolution passed unanimously by Amicus in Testing, Colindale.

Resolution on Proposed Shift System for Testing in Bristol

Staff in Colindale Testing Department view the proposed Working Patterns and Staffing Structure for Testing at Bristol Southmead with deep concern.

We are concerned about:

(a) the effect which these proposals, if implemented, will have on the lives of our colleagues in Bristol, Birmingham and Southampton.

(b) the probability that whatever is implemented in the Midlands and South West will shortly afterwards be implemented in the North and in London and the South East.

(c) the 6.00 a.m. start, which would be impossible for parents of young children or for staff who travel to work by public transport.

(d) the week-day shifts taking place at four different times of day, the latest ending at 11.00 p.m., plus a different two-shift pattern at week-ends, with consequent large changes in sleep patterns and meal-times that will affect the health of staff.

(e) the inclusion of 46 working days, instead of the normal 45, in the 9 weeks, and the 5 days per year to be used as a contingency, which taken together would give staff an extra 11 working days per year, when they would travel to work in their own time and at their own expense.

(f) the Saturday working, which would be difficult for parents of young children and for those who travel to work by train, (because the engineering work on the tracks is done at week-ends), and would also discriminate against some religious groups.

(g) the staffing structure, which would approximately halve the number of Biomedical Scientists in Testing in the Midlands and South West, leaving an inadequate number of state registered staff to cope with the workload.

(h) the probability that the training week would actually be used to cover staff shortages.

(i) the shortening of the tea-breaks to 2 X 15 minutes, when the present 20 minute breaks at Colindale are sometimes inadequate because of the queue in the tea-room.

We find the proposals inconsistent with the aims of Improving Working Lives, and believe that the NHSBT will not get the best possible work out of staff who are unable to arrange good care for their children and whose own health is suffering from the weekly changes in their working patterns.

We call upon the management to consider the following changes to their proposals:

* Keeping Processing and Testing at more than three sites, thereby reducing the necessity for very long opening hours at each site.
* The earliest starting time to be about 8.00 a.m., except where staff request to be allowed to start earlier,
* People with responsibility for young children to be allowed an earliest start time of 9.00 a.m. to fit their child-care arrangements.
* The employment of staff on fixed hours, some working always in the mornings and others always at later times, which would give them a better work-life balance, would not upset their biological clocks and would enable them to do better work.
* Keeping to a working week of 5 days of 7hrs 30mins each.
* Avoiding Saturday working by extra work on Fridays and Mondays, as happens at present in Colindale.
* Protecting training by employing more staff, including supernumerary trainers.

We pledge our total support to fellow members in Bristol.

If there is any attempt to impose the structure and hours in the Consultation Document on members at Bristol, we will request Amicus to ballot the members in all the Testing laboratories in the NBS for united industrial action.

Passed unanimously by Amicus members, Testing Department, NBS Colindale,
4th July 2007

Here is a resolution passed unanimously by Amicus in testing, Manchester.

Resolution on proposed shifts at Bristol


Testing staff at Manchester view the propposal tabled to the Bristol testing staff with deep concern and anger.

Anything agreed at Bristol has clear implifications for us and also staff at Colindale.

The hours are not easy to work, in particular the 6 am start and Saturday evening working, and are potentially discriminatory.

The staffing structure is inadequate to cope with such a workload; in particular there is a dire shortage of state registered staff with the only new posts being in the lower grades of Band 2, 3 and 4.

Also the 6 day weeks to cover Saturdays and the 5 days “banked” to cover Bank Holidays and weekends are totally unacceptable and not the best way to cover the work.

The combination of extra late, weekend and Bank Holiday working, the extra number of days worked per year, and the very early starts, make the whole system very family-unfriendly and incompattible with the avowed aims of IWL [Improving Working Lives].

Any such discussions should not form part of the SW redundancy discussion but should be a proper national negotiation with input from all affected sites.

In any case the only reason to work such anti-social shifts is to allow the NBS to close other Centres, making colleagues in other Centres redundant; if the NBS keeps a sensible number of PTI sites there will be no need to move to such extreme shifts.

We therefore call on the NBS to halt the strategy which centralises all donor testing work on just three sites.

We pledge our total support to fellow members in Bristol.

If there is any attempt to impose this structure and these hours on members at Bristol we will request Amicus to ballot the members in Manchester, Colindale and Bristol for united industrial action.


Passed unanimously by Amicus members, Testing department, Manchester Blood Centre, 14th June 2007

What are the plans - and why are they a threat?

Staff have been in industrial dispute with the NBS board of directors/management for many months now, over an unworkable reconfiguration strategy. It is proposed that all local processing and testing labs be closed, and their functions condensed into just three 'supercentres' to serve the whole of England and North Wales, in Bristol, Manchester and Colindale.

The rationale for this plan is a short-sighted financial one. The strategy was boasted about in the Financial Times before it was even announced to affected staff. Directors are justifying centralisation because the demand from hospitals for red cells is currently falling, while the cost of each pack of red cells is rising. It suits them to assume this projected decline in demand will continue, despite an aging UK population and looming threats such as a flu pandemic. Other service areas that we provide, like platelets and transplants, are growing, but this seems to be ignored to fit with the market-minded strategy.

A study for respected journal Vox Sanguinis by Dr. A Pereira found that larger blood processing and testing centres do not necessarily lead to economies of scale.
Link here - registration needed for full text, but overview available to all.

We say that patients' welfare should be our number one concern, not tightening the purse strings to win praise from the Department of Health.

The National Blood Service is in fact a financially successful and efficient part of the NHS, which, unlike many health Trusts, is not in debt. The management proposals are purely based on cost-cutting and speculation by accountants. Our bosses have no problem with spending undisclosed thousands of taxpayers' money on parasitic external consultancy agencies.

The NBS directors plan to make overall 600 staff - half of the laboratory workforce - redundant. They claim this will save the service millions. (Surprisingly, just before the strategy was announced, around 50 new high level Band 7 posts were created, which cost the NBS £1.9 million in salaries.) These are highly specialised and skilled staff, many of whom have worked for the NBS for decades, and have never worked anywhere else. Opportunities for transfer to the new supercentres or suitable redeployment elsewhere in the crisis-stricken NHS are few and far between.

The new supercentres will be huge factories running on harsh anti-social 24 hour shift rotas to cope with the workload. At each site the NBS will have to wastefully recruit and train new workers, having just thrown the existing loyal workforce onto the scrapheap.

There are fears about road congestion delaying the smooth flow of products around the country. Our ability to respond in case of major incident could be compromised. There will be no south-east centre outside the M25, no centre at all north of London to the east of the Pennines, and no centre for the West Midlands (including the diverse needs of the second city, Birmingham). Police figures back up staff concerns about jams on long south-west transport routes. Blood collections from local mobile sessions and permanent donor centres would have to be driven hundreds of miles around the country to and from the supercentres, putting even more reliance on an already overloaded and frequently clogged up motorway network, and shortening the life-span of the products. The same would apply for patients' samples, increasing the risk of them being misplaced, wrongly stored or wrongly labelled.

Although the NBS vehicle fleet has been commended for its use of green fuel, adding to traffic volume is bad for the environment. Consider the effects of a major road traffic accident. There will be people needing blood which cannot be delivered because of the traffic chaos caused by the same accident. The suggestion of transporting blood by helicopter in an emergency is ludicrous - they have to be crewed and maintained which would be an impossible cost.

The official line is that services which need to be close to hospitals will stay there, like the issue blood banks. Staff believe otherwise. A patient died this week waiting to be rushed a 'washed' platelet from the local centre. 'Washing' is just one of many special processes done by the components lab - which is being centralised. 40% of samples crossmatched by our special investigations department (on-call day and night, 365 days a year) are classed as 'emergency'.

Staff do not believe that centralisation will make the Blood Service more efficient. We know best, not managers, the day-to-day and hour-to-hour needs of our hospitals and patients. We have good working relationships with our users, and essential local knowledge. Hospitals could be forced to spend more on training their own haematology staff, larger storage capacity and reagents for their own testing.
Despite what the directors say, neither employees or service users have had any meaningful input into the strategy - the service's future is being dictated to us all from on high.



For more information you can contact iww.nbs[AT]googlemail.com (replace [AT] with @)