75 stories for 75 years
Two hundred babies are born on a typical month at Blackpool Victoria Hospital – and our colleagues and their families are often among people celebrating a birth. We asked them to share their beautiful babies with us and these are just some of the pictures we received to mark the 75th birthday of the NHS.… Continue Reading Blackpool babes born to our colleagues at the Vic
Life-saving NHS care started early for veterinary student Ella-Mae Storm-Eckersley when she was born at just 26 weeks. “She weighed 940 grams (33 ounces) and we thought we were going to lose our little girl”, said dad Andrew, from Poulton. But thanks to huge advances over the years in neonatal medicine and the dedicated professionals… Continue Reading From 940 gram baby to student vet with world at her feet
One of the latest recruits to the Pharmacy department at Blackpool Teaching Hospitals has two arms and not much else. But what it lacks in body, the £400,000 robot more than makes up for in speed and accuracy. “Our old robot served us faithfully for 14 years but it had come to the end of… Continue Reading Pharmacy robot helps keep medicines flowing
Everyone has heard of kidney donors – but what about a knee donor? Or a meniscus transplant to be more precise. Thanks to the NHS Amanda Fryer is now in much less pain after successfully undergoing an operation for the knee procedure in 2021. “I now have a much better quality of life,” said Amanda,… Continue Reading Surgery eases knee pain after donor’s gift
The Chaplaincy and Spiritual Care department was originally founded by hospital staff and volunteers and relied on the goodwill of local church leaders to provide religious cover. It was first based in an old annex off ward 15. When the first full-time chaplain, the Rev Jessica Turner was appointed in 2002, she helped design and… Continue Reading Stained glass windows join chapel on move to new home
A team whose planning of care for patients can be a matter of life and death took the Non-Clinical Team of the Year honour at this year’s Blackpool Hospitals annual staff awards. Appointments and preventative care for cancer patients were massively disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic but the work of the Corporate Cancer Services Team… Continue Reading Team of the Year award for Cancer Services
Our doctors and scientists working in pathology are experts in illness and disease. Their job is to study samples from a person’s body to understand what’s making them unwell. For example: If your blood doesn’t clot properly – it’s a haematologist who will conduct the blood tests, confirm if you have haemophilia, and offer treatment… Continue Reading Pathology at Blackpool down the years in pictures
She was a trainee nurse. He was an apprentice chef. They’d been childhood sweethearts but drifted apart until one day their eyes met … over a hot lock on Ward 11. A heated kitchen trolley steaming with suet puddings might not be the most romantic of locations but, for Rachel Burr, her parents’ courtship and… Continue Reading When love blossomed over the catering trolley on Ward 11
Teams from across Blackpool Teaching Hospitals have been shortlisted for major awards recognising safety, culture and experience in patient care. The HSJ Patient Safety Awards has the ambition of helping “drive improvements in culture and quality across the NHS”. The annual awards recognise and reward the teams and individuals who strive to deliver improved patient… Continue Reading Trust shortlisted for major awards recognising patient safety
Blackpool’s first known black nurse Alison Bennison was one of tens of thousands of people from the Caribbean islands who became known as “the Windrush generation”. The SS Ormonde had docked in Liverpool in 1947 with 108 Jamaican islanders but it was the arrival of HMT Empire Windrush at Tilbury docks in Essex that became… Continue Reading Windrush migrant who was hospital’s first black nurse