Norfolk Blood Bikes

norford blood bikes is a charitable organization that simply exists to serve the needs of our NHS hospitals across Norfolk and the East anglian air ambulance based out of Norwich airport I’m Sandy Gurley I’m very pleased to be the chairman of norford blood bikes I help lead the team that uh covers the whole of Norfolk and we’re we’re a group of about uh nearly 100 volunteers what we do is move products as required by the hospitals when they need it every shift that we have every night every daytime we have five volunteers on call One controller and four volunteers who are mobile whether on bikes or cars and they’re the ones will then get the call from the controller to mobilize and go and fulfill a task whether it’s picking up a sample and taking it where it’s needed or going to uplift several boxes of blood or platelets I love doing it it it’s really nice to be part of a community where you can do something that you enjoy doing as a as a hobby that you’re doing some good while you’re doing it my job is such that I can utilize my downtime for volunteering the skills I have for my job can also translate to other areas of the blood bike so I also do uh the event coordination I’m an event coordinator if you haven’t got your Advanced Riders then you can still be a driver for the blood bikes what it enables you to do is to to get that familiarity with where to go at the hospitals and what you’re picking up morning how you doing all right yeah sample for microbiology lovely 3373 yep that’s super thank a control or dispatch four Riders across the county we’ve got the QE the Queen Elizabeth and in kingslin nor and Norwich University Hospital and the James padet University Hospital we start by me checking who I’ve got who my Riders are what vehicle they’ve got whether it be a car or a bike then if it’s a night shift which starts at 7:00 p.m. at 6:30 I’ll start ringing around my Riders hello there fine thanks you and I’ll check in with them I have a checklist make sure they’re okay to do it that they’ve got all the equipment they need what vehicle they’ve got what what’s the starting mileage then I remind them to check in with me um every leg of the trip and give me etas for everything they’re doing and I will track them all the way through that job until they’ve got back home not until it’s been dropped off but until they got back home now the tracker is fitted to every vehicle within the uh the county so I can then see whichever vehicle where it’s going and what it’s doing in fact we have a vehicle moving at the moment and this is Mark Mason which is a a focus and there you go it’s doing 54 miles an hour on the a47 heading away from Kingsland so I would suspect it’s going to microbiology or the northan norch generally microbiology um with a sample I’m Andy PL and I’ve been part of nor blood bikes since 2011 when it started now some people realize what we did and we get a thanks you know that’s that’s nice we were at the raw nor show one year and a woman approached us and said uh you know you saved my baby’s life and there was a young child who was obviously premature and we brought I think it was bloodb was they needed transfusion at the time you know but she approached us and told us and her name was Caitlyn and we named one of the cars after her we wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for the Goodwill of the general public and some supportive organizations that are out there helping us day in day out if you’re out there and you see us at one of these events or you feel that you can support us in any way please let us know so that we and our volunteers can continue to do this incredible work of making sure that blood is there and blood products are available when people need them in our hospitals here in Norfolk