Off On A Tangent

Our health is our most important aspect of our lives, but when you are a parent your child's health is much more important.

I want this post to allow people to understand the importance of the NHS (for those in foreign countries National Health Service) for the children within our nation. As you may already be aware the BBC are showing an 8 part programme on the Children's Acute Transport Service (CATS).

CATS are a service that run nation wide and allows the transportation for a critically ill child from a local hospital, to a larger hospital with a specialised Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU). 

This is quotes from the NHS CATS website:

CATS stabilises and transports children needing intensive care from over 50 district general hospitals in the North Thames region and East Anglia to critical care units in London and the South East. In addition, we retrieve ECMO patients to Great Ormond Street Hospital from PICUs across the UK. As one of the largest services in Europe, we retrieve over 1200 critically ill children each year by road and air. The CATS Referral Hotline is staffed 24/7 by experienced administrators who ensure that every referral for intensive care is promptly routed to senior clinical staff on duty. Instant advice is provided by a CATS consultant, who can also teleconference appropriate specialists (e.g. cardiologists, neurosurgeons) to make a rapid decision about when to mobilise the retrieval team.

This is a fantastic service that the NHS runs and has saved thousands of children's lives. As a student nurse I got the opportunity to work in my local Intensive Care Unit where we were caring for a critically ill child. The child needed to be transferred to Kings College Hospital in London for critical specialist treatment. The South Thames Retrieval Service arrived at the hospital within a couple of hours, the practitioners on board were the highest specialised professionals, and the transported the child with ease and knowledge. 

Please please watch this programme, it really opens your eyes to the good the NHS does. Its quite refreshing to see good publicity for a service that has been in work for 60 years. 

This service allows hope for the parents of a critically ill child. 

I hope this has not bored anyone and I know it is not my usual topic of thought, but I thought I would tell you of a wonderful cause that gives a critically ill child a second chance, and this is something that is very close to my heart. 

xx