Blood services improved at the Royal Lancaster Infirmary

A team of phlebotomists at the Royal Lancaster Infirmary (RLI) have undertaken a Listening into Action project to streamline and improve Phlebotomy services which means they are seeing more patients each day.
The team of phlebotomists at the Royal Lancaster Infirmary.The team of phlebotomists at the Royal Lancaster Infirmary.
The team of phlebotomists at the Royal Lancaster Infirmary.

The phlebotomy team; Karen Nuttall, Karen Nicholson, Helen Morris, Catherine Weatherhead and weekend Phlebotomists Amanda Parnell, and Peter Smith listened to feedback about their service at RLI and have redesigned it to be more

efficient and effective, which means that the majority of blood samples requested are taken that day.

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The storeroom has been relocated near to where the team work, which frees up more time to be with patients.

This change means they are now completing all Phlebotomy requests by noon each day.

The team between them take approximately 120 bloods every day and deliver to pathology.

Catherine Weatherhead, Phlebotomist, said: “We used to work as a group but after receiving feedback from the ward staff across the site we decided to adopt ward based working. This change saves us time and ensures each request is dealt with

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“All these changes mean we are able to see an extra four patients per Phlebotomist a day which is fantastic.

“We’ve had some great feedback from staff and patients who have said our service is better than ever.

“We hope to go into Wave 4 of Listening into Action (LiA) with our project to train our Phlebotomists to cannulate.

“It’s something that we are all passionate about achieving.

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“If you have an idea that you are passionate about and something you want to change in your area then I would definitely recommend joining the LiA journey.”

LiA is a key element of the improvement approach the Trust adopted in winter 2014 and has proven models of change. Our aim is to fundamentally shift how we work and lead by putting clinicians and staff at the centre of change for the benefit of our patients, our staff and the organisation as a whole.

Jackie Daniel, Chief Executive, said: “These are fabulous achievements and the team should be very proud. I look forward to seeing their progress in Wave 4.”

The Phlebotomists’ project was one of 16 schemes in Wave 2 of Listening into Action.

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Liz McDougall, LiA Lead, said: “The Phlebotomy team in particular took the Listening into Action ethos to heart and very much listened to the feedback about their service and then did some real action to improve what they were doing and have had some great feedback from staff on the wards.”