New ventilators helping patients at county hospital

The league of friends has gifted eight mobile ventilators, costing more than £196,000, to The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH), which runs Royal Shrewsbury Hospital (RSH) and Princess Royal Hospital in Telford.

It means clinicians caring for patients in the Intensive Care Unit (ITU) who require oxygen through a ventilator, can provide high quality, personalised care.

Previously some patients had to switch ventilators, from a mask to a nasal canular to deliver the oxygen they need, whenever they wanted to eat or drink.

Now the ventilator remains the same and only the consumable that delivers the oxygen is changed.

So far more than 300 patients have benefited from the new ventilators.

Dr Mike Dixon, Consultant in Anaesthetics and Intensive Care, said: “The new ventilators have made an enormous difference, not only to our patients but our ITU colleagues too.

“The state-of-the-art diagnostics support us in making the best clinical decisions for our patients. Our patients have a better care experience, as we are not constantly having to switch over machines whenever they want to eat or drink.

“They also enable us to save time in training staff as they only have one ventilator to learn how to use.”

Dr John Jones, Medical Director, said: “We are incredibly grateful to the League of Friends for their fantastic donation which will support us to provide the best possible care to our patients in ITU.”

Patient, Angela Jenkins, said: “I think the new ventilators are great. It has been so easy for the nursing staff to switch me from the mask when I need to eat which obviously gives them more time for the many other jobs they need to do.”

Richard Steventon, Chair of League of Friends of RSH, said: “We are delighted that we were able to provide these much-needed ventilators to the ITU department. It is incredible to see the difference they are making to patient care.”