As you know, the Trust is currently carrying out a comprehensive package of fire improvement works across our three main hospitals sites (Lincoln, Pilgrim and Grantham).
This is part of £46 million upgrade over the next few years, to bring our estate up-to-date and ensure our staff and patients are kept as safe as possible from fires whilst in our hospitals.
We recently invited BBC Radio Lincolnshire into our maternity unit at Lincoln County Hospital to have a brief tour of the building and see what work has been taking place over the past few months.
The tour started on the first floor (Branston ward) before making its way up to the work-in-progress third floor, before finally taking in the new surroundings of the state-of-the-art neonatal unit on the top floor.
“Walking around the first floor ward, you can see it’s rather tired in places and we’ve decanting some of the wards and moving them out and doing a lot of fire precautions work recently,” said Keiron Davey, the Trust’s resident fire safety advisor.
“We’ve taken this opportunity to strip back as much as we can and go right back to basics, to bring our premises up to modern day standards.
“That includes new fire doors and fire compartmentation, so if a fire starts in a certain room it can be contained so it doesn’t spread and we can allow our patients and staff time to escape.”
Keiron went on to explain that increased fire evacuation training has also been rolled out to all staff recently.
“We need to maintain clinical care for our patients in the event of a fire so we don’t necessarily evacuate all floors in one go to outside. We’ll move them elsewhere in the hospital so the fire can be contained.”
Up on the top floor Keiron introduced the BBC reporter to Nocton ward manager Rachel Wright, who showed him exactly what the other floors can expect to see in the coming months.
Rachel also showed him some of the specialist evacuation equipment we have on hand to keep our most precious of cargo as safe as possible.
“We have a dedicated evacuation area here which includes evacuation chairs and cots,” said Rachel.
“We also have special aprons where the babies sit in the front pocket and can be safely evacuated out.”
The Trust is investing a total of £46 million into fire improvements works over three financial years up to 2020. We received a loan from the Department of Health last year and have committed part of our own capital resources to fund the rest.
Watch this space for more fire improvement updates from Pilgrim and Grantham coming soon…