Former Bradford Teaching Hospitals nurse Sylvia Coleman, who cared for many people injured in the Bradford City Football Club fire, decided to mark her 60th birthday by making a donation to the Bosom Friends charity.
Bosom Friends (Bradford) has been running for more than 30 years, providing support to women affected by breast cancer.
Before she retired from Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in 2016, Sylvia – known affectionately by staff as ‘Auntie Syl’ – dedicated much of her nursing career to looking after women who had breast reconstruction at Bradford Royal Infirmary.
Sylvia devoted her career to plastic surgery and was on duty at St Luke’s Hospital on the day of the Bradford City fire. In the weeks and months following the blaze she tended to patients on the hospital’s plastic surgery wards, many of whom had suffered major burns to their hands and feet.
Breast reconstruction
“In my last few years at the Trust I worked a lot with the breast reconstruction team and got to know many ladies who came to the dressings clinic, as well as the Bosom Friends’ team,” said Sylvia.
“I really wanted to support a charity to mark my 60th and Bosom Friends was the obvious choice, so I’m very glad to be able to give something back to help others.”
Julia Sunderland, from Bosom Friends, said: “We can’t thank Sylvia enough for her very kind donation. It will help us fund more cushions for newly diagnosed ladies and help towards the gifts we give patients after breast surgery.”
Earlier this year Bosom Friends funded two nurses to be trained in nipple tattooing following breast reconstruction; and they have also contributed towards extra things to make clinics and waiting rooms more homely.
ENDS
For further media information, please contact communications@bthft.nhs.uk or call 01274 383901.
Note to Editors:
- Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust:
Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is responsible for providing hospital services for the people of Bradford and communities across Yorkshire. We serve a core population of around 500,000 and provide specialist services for 1.1 million people.
Our 5,500 staff work over several sites, including Bradford Royal Infirmary, which provides the majority of inpatient services, and St Luke’s Hospital, which predominantly provides outpatient and rehabilitation services. We also manage local community hospitals at Westwood Park, Westbourne Green, and Eccleshill.
In early 2017, a new £28 million wing opened at Bradford Royal Infirmary, part of a £75m investment to improve patient care across our hospitals over a five-year period. It provides world-class facilities for elderly care, children’s services, a state-of-the-art intensive care unit with increased single-room provision and a retail concourse.
The new wing is a continuation of our work to improve patient experience after our new £2 million neonatal unit officially opened in January 2015. Our maternity services were recently shortlisted for the Royal College of Midwives’ (RCM) Midwifery Service of the Year Award, recognising excellence and innovation in the provision of maternity care.
In 2017, we also completed a £2 million refurbishment of our Emergency Department (ED) as part of an ambitious vision to create a more efficient acute medicine service for the people of Bradford. It has been designed to provide a slicker and more efficient service, with faster senior clinical involvement at an early stage in the patient pathway.
As a teaching hospital, we are at the forefront of education and development in healthcare, and have an excellent reputation for research performance. We are one of the leading centres in conducting applied research in the country, particularly in quality and safety, elderly care and rehabilitation.
The Trust is home to the Bradford Institute for Health Research (BIHR) where researchers have led the development, validation and implementation of the award-winning Bradford Electronic Frailty Index (eFI) which helps calculate an elderly person’s risk of disability, impairment, falls and complications of chronic diseases, as well as their diminishing independence and capability. This is now being used by 98 per cent of all GPs across the country.
Our award-winning Ophthalmology department is home to numerous worldwide clinical trials taking the lead in eye care research and we are one of only three sites in the United Kingdom to be enlisted in the Perioperative Enhanced Recovery Hip Fracture Care of Patients with Dementia (PERFECTED) study, which will investigate how the NHS can introduce better standards of care to improve outcomes for people with dementia.
The Trust has its own Bradford Hospitals Charity: https://bradfordhospitalscharity.org/
Follow us on Twitter: @BTHFT
For more information please visit www.bradfordhospitals.nhs.uk