• School students set to put their best feet forward for Radiology appeal

    Bingley Grammar School students are set to walk five kilometres to raise money for the Bradford Hospitals’ Charity Rays a Smile appeal.

    This Friday, 28 June, more than 300 year seven students and staff will walk a round-trip from the school along the Leeds-Liverpool Canal into Bingley town centre and back.

    They will also be joined by clinical staff from Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, who will talk to the young people about the appeal and how the funds will be spent.

    They aim to raise £4,000 in total towards the Rays a Smile appeal. For more information about the appeal and to view the appeal video, visit https://bradfordhospitalscharity.org/rays-a-smile/.

    Dr LeeAnne Elliott, consultant paediatric radiologist at Bradford Royal Infirmary, will be among those joining the school walk. She said: “We are incredibly grateful to the students and staff from Bingley Grammar School for choosing to walk and raise money for our NHS charity.

    “The money raised will go to our ‘Rays a Smile’ radiology appeal, which aims to make our scanning facilities in Bradford more child-friendly.

    Less stressful

    “Almost all patients treated by Bradford Teaching Hospitals – either as an inpatient or outpatient – are referred for imaging. More than 20,000 children and young people are imaged each year. We believe these changes will not only make scanning less stressful for our young patients and their parents, but for all our patients.”

    David Brown, student support officer, said the fundraising walk reflected the school’s ethos of ‘Belong, Grow and Succeed’. “All our students follow a LORIC award programme. This relates to Leadership, Organisation, Resilience, Independence and Communication. This walk fits perfectly within this programme.

    “Our year seven students are really enthusiastic about the walk and are doing well with their fundraising. We have made it clear that they should raise what they can, with no pressure, but they are doing so well. We are extremely proud of them all.”

    Hayley Collis, Head of Fundraising for Bradford Hospitals’ Charity, said: “Thank you to the staff and students from Bingley Grammar School for taking on this 5k walk for our charity.

    “We have had an excellent relationship with the school since they supported our refurbishment of the new Children and Young People’s Unit at Bradford Royal Infirmary, and we look forward to working with them again.

    “We will certainly be delighted to welcome them to the radiology department, when the project is finished, to see how the money they raised has helped our patients.”

    To find out more about Bradford Hospitals’ Charity and how you can support your local hospitals, visit www.bradfordhospitalscharity.org. Alternatively, contact Hayley Collis or Elaine Drake on 01274 274809 or email charity@bthft.nhs.uk

    ENDS

    Note to Editors:

    • Bradford Hospitals’ Charity is one of more than 250 NHS charities based around the UK. It supports the strategic direction of Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust by funding projects which go over and above what he NHS provides.
    • Did you know that, together, all NHS charities give £1million every single day to the NHS!
    • In 2017, a new £28million wing opened at Bradford Royal Infirmary, which was part of a £75m investment to improve patient care across our hospitals. It provides world-class facilities for the elderly, children and a brand new intensive care unit. Bradford Hospitals’ Charity provided £260,000 to enable the Trust to create family friendly environments, state-of-the-art equipment and innovative distraction toys and games for young people.
    • With the support of Bradford Hospitals’ Charity, BTHFT was also able to provide more cots, including intensive care and high dependency cots, new family accommodation, a revamped counselling suite and a dedicated room for mothers to express milk for pre-term babies when the new neonatal unit opened in 2015.

     

    For further media information, please contact Kelly Thornham, Communications Officer, at communications@bthft.nhs.uk or call 01274 382265

    Twitter: @BTHFTCharity                Facebook: bradfordhospitalscharity Instagram:bradfordhospitalscharity LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/bradfordhospitalscharity

    Note to Editors:

    1. 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 £2m 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.

    Follow us on Twitter: @BTHFT

    For more information please visit www.bradfordhospitals.nhs.uk