Painstaking work in Pakistan, but it's worth the effort for Caty
Caty Delmont, a Biomedical Scientist for Viapath at King’s College Hospital has continued a long and impressive track record of offering her laboratory expertise abroad with a recent trip to Pakistan.
Working in Blood Sciences at Viapath, Haematology and Blood Transfusion Laboratories at King’s College Hospital, Caty has considerable experience and expertise in the laboratory environment which she routinely shares with colleagues in countries with less developed services.
A history of helping
After completing her FIBMS qualification in 1985 and following a successful two week visit as part of her Diploma in cultural and linguistic studies in1987, Caty was invited back to a Hospital in Pakistan in 1989 where she worked for two years training staff and helping to implement good, quality laboratory practices.
Since then, Caty has returned to Pakistan four times to continue developing what is an improving hospital service as well as doing similar such work in Bangladesh, Somaliland and in the Maldives where she spent two and a half years during the mid-to-late 90’s.
Her benevolence is all the more exceptional when you consider that her frequent visits are completely self funded, including the purchasing of teaching resources and use of her annual leave entitlement, to facilitate these trips.
2015
This year, Caty spent three weeks in Multan Pakistan re-visiting the Women’s Christian Hospital where she has worked before. Working and speaking in Urdu from 7am – 6.30pm, six days a week and preparing lessons in the evenings.
Caty has been busy training both junior and senior laboratory staff (pictured right) as well as reviewing processes, instrumentation and procedures to help prepare the hospital for an upcoming inspection by the Punjab Health Authority (similar to CPA inspections here, but for the whole hospital).
The junior members of staff had only been in the hospital for three months or less, and were taught some basic haematology and blood transfusion as well as practical laboratory skills. Following their practical and theory lessons, they sat an exam set by Caty with a minimum 80% pass mark.
The more senior laboratory staff were competency assessed and then given lessons in teaching and had their skills assessed while delivering lessons on their own. This was important so that the training of staff could continue once Caty had returned home.
In the short time she was there, Caty was also able to revise and improve the systems in place for logging essential Quality Control (QC), Quality Assurance (QA), “from bedside to bedside” Temperature monitoring, audit information and training logs to ensure the hospital was better equipped for their inspection.
Such revisions included implementing standard operation procedures for investigating transfusion reactions, improving the protocol for crossmatching for emergency blood transfusion and the introduction of a test for Unconjugated Bilirubin, which can have severe consequences for babies.
Caty gave a presentation on QC, QA, Vertical and Horizontal audit processes to senior medical and nursing staff. Application of this in other parts of the hospital was discussed. It was concluded that although Audits already take place they could be more extensive.
Caty also attended Hospital Blood transfusion Committee and advised them on laboratory testing protocols, blood donor assessment and blood unit storage.
Caty also wrote a full laboratory report with recommendations for the Hospital Medical Director.
Benefiting patients
The ultimate goal for healthcare workers is to improve the lives of patients. Laboratory staff don’t often have the opportunity to directly interact with patients, but are acutely aware of the direct impact of diagnostics on patient outcomes.
When asked what the product of her recent visit was, Caty said “The goal is always to improve the outcomes for patients. By implementing more robust procedures and placing a greater focus on quality we have been delivering more accurate and timely diagnoses for patients in Multan”.
“The better the diagnoses, the better the treatment decision doctors and clinicians are able to make. It is so exciting and rewarding to see my students learning so much and applying these skills in the real world after such a short space of time”.
“The key is to keep costs down which means very basic technology and lab staff with lower educational qualifications, this way it makes treatment much more affordable for patients often from poor backgrounds.”
Future plans
Caty is currently planning a trip for February next year to go back to Bangladesh and once again work during her time off. A massive well done Caty from everyone at Viapath, and best of luck with your future visits – we look forward to hearing about them!
Further Information
Women’s Christian Hospital – Multan, Pakistan
If you would like to find out more, you can contact Caty directly at this email address:
caty [dot] delmont [at] nhs [dot] net (subject: Pakistan%20visit%20-%20Viapath%20news%20story)
