Royal Papworth Hospital: World-leading heart and lung centre reflects on five years at new site

  • A day in the life: ITV News Anglia's Matthew Hudson spent time at the hospital to see what makes it tick

Staff working at one of the UK's leading transplant hospitals are facing new pressures, five years since they moved into a multi-million pound purpose-built site.

Royal Papworth Hospital welcomed its first patient on 1 May 2019, after moving from its old site in Papworth village to a new £160m building on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus.

Now, staff at the hospital are working hard to ensure they can keep patients safe as the demands on the NHS continue to increase.

To mark the five-year milestone, on Tuesday 30 April ITV News Anglia is presenting a special programme from the hospital site, focusing on the life-changing and world-leading work being carried out there, and the challenges its staff and patients overcome every day.

Royal Papworth treats around 50,000 patients each year, performing more heart and lung transplants than any other UK centre. It also has the best survival rates in the UK for cardiac surgery.

But advances in treatment mean people are living longer, putting more pressure on hospitals like Papworth, where many patients are waiting for transplants or undergoing complex procedures.

Mehro-Nissa Javed has spent more than a 100 days on the respiratory unit with repeated chest infections. Credit: ITV News Anglia

Eilish Midlane, the hospital's chief executive, said: "Over 76 years of the NHS treatments have developed beyond anyone's imagination.

"That means patients are living longer and sadly a proportion of those are living with much more complex co-morbidities, and that undoubtedly generates demand."

Nurses and doctors on Papworth's wards must constantly re-assess patients' care needs.

Samantha Henman, a lead cystic fibrosis nurse, explained the challenge.

"Every day you have to triage what you can do.

"What are the priorities? What needs to be done? [You] just constantly reassess what you're doing throughout the day. It's a job where things change very rapidly and you might need to deal with emergencies."

The pressure on Papworth's beds is managed by the heads of each service, at a daily morning meeting.

They find out how many patients may be leaving or moving, which feeds into a meeting with operations managers from departments including cardiology and surgery and transplants.

Surgeons at Papworth have some of the highest patient survival rates in the country. Credit: ITV News Anglia

The hospital has 310 beds for patients, including a 46-bed critical care unit, and on regular occasions the hospital is on red alert - the highest alert level for bed capacity.

Stuart Fisher-Thomson is the service manager for surgery and transplant.

He said: "There are days when unfortunately we have a lot of sick patients in critical care and there's nothing we can do.

"That does lead to challenges around trying to identify who are the right patients to take into theatre and what surgeries we can undertake."

The pressure is not just on beds.

Martin Ward, head of clinical engineering, has the responsibility of making sure everything works as it should.

He and his team of nine engineers repair and maintain more than 50,000 pieces of high-tech equipment ranging from thermometers to heart and lung bypass machines.

He said: "Every piece of equipment has to be maintained to A1 condition.

"Ultimately if we don't do our job properly patients could come to serious harm. We're pretty busy all of the time."

  • Watch ITV News Anglia's special programme from Royal Papworth Hospital at 6pm on 30 April.