€22,500 -TCD Med Day
We were delighted to accept 2 cheques recently from the Trinity Med Day Committee totaling €22,500 for St James’s Hospital.
Huge thank you to Trinity Med Day for their annual fundraiser which took place in November. Two beneficiaries for St James’s Hospital where chosen, and you can read about the projects below:
Automated Chemotherapy Robot
This projects aims to introduce a compounding robot into SJH. Chemotherapy drugs by their nature are toxic to both patients and staff and must be prepared under very strictly controlled conditions. To safely compound chemotherapy drugs requires intensive training that can take up to four months for each technician. It is predominantly paper based and heavily reliant on staff members undertaking a wide range of activities. The manufacturing process takes place in an isolator within a clean room and is entirely manual. The robot will manufacture cancer drugs that would normally be manually produced by Pharmacy technicians. This will ultimately release trained staff into areas of direct patient care, allow consistent and safe production of cancer drugs that is not totally dependent on human intervention. It will allow the department to develop other services e.g. the cancer clinical trials service and be able to react to increases in demand.
Improving Fitness and Reducing Frailty in Patients Undergoing Haematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation
For many people diagnosed with aggressive blood cancers, undergoing a bone marrow transplant may be the only shot at cure. However, this procedure carries a high risk of complications. While traditionally older age has been an obstacle to having a transplant, medical advances now mean the procedure can be considered up to the age of 75. We know that a person’s fitness predicts their ability to recover from a transplant more so than their age. We therefore want to help patients improve their fitness before transplant and afterwards through fitness evaluations and exercise programmes. The aim is to now expand the post-transplant physiotherapy regime and funds raised by Trinity Med Day will go towards the necessary equipment involved in this. The hope is to improve the patient journey through stem cell transplantation – by better preparing them physically for the treatment and by speeding up their recovery afterwards. Allowing patients to more quickly return to their normal daily activities and re-integrate into society. If successful, this work will provide clear benefit to individual patients in terms of physical and mental health. It should ease the physical and financial strain placed on their family and caregivers.
