The Paediatric Retrieval Service provides a unique and vital service at the heart of NHS Scotland.
Operating 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, this team of specialist doctors and nurses are on call to ensure that critically ill children receive life-saving treatment wherever they are in the territory.
Now, given exclusive and intimate access to the world of this eye-opening and utterly life-affirming service, Cobhair Chloinne brings the work of the Paediatric Retrieval Service to BBC ALBA.
The job of this service is to get doctors and nurses fast to any of the 200+ hospitals in Scotland, so that seriously ill children can be transported to the major intensive care units in Glasgow and Edinburgh. What’s more remarkable is that the Retrieval team doctors and nurses must provide the highest level of life support while in transit, often inside ambulances, helicopters, airplanes and rapid response vehicles.
The Paediatric Retrieval Service works with cutting edge equipment in demanding, ever-changing environments – but the job still boils down to their unique ability to stay calm, and keep these children alive throughout their often long journeys.
Cobhair Chloinne spent 6 months in the company of the Paediatric Retrieval Teams based at Glasgow’s Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Yorkhill and Edinburgh’s Royal Hospital for Sick Children.
The programme series hears first-hand from the doctors and nurses who, day in day out, provide a life-saving services to the remotest parts of Scotland.
The series shows how the NHS across Scotland delivers care to sick children. From the central belt it travels to Shetland, the Western Isles – and to Belfast. In the company of the team, viewers see children with life threatening conditions nursed back to health, often with some of the most advanced medical treatments available. Sadly not every child can be saved and brave families in this situation who appear in the programmes have consented to their stories being told.
Across six episodes viewers get to know the central characters from the Retrieval Teams. They are the point of access into the stories the service touches upon every day of the year, showing parents, often at the moment they always dreaded, when their child becomes gravely sick.
This is a service people only encounter in times of the most extreme need, distress and urgency – so few know much about it. This series addresses this information deficit and offers va;uab;e insights into the operation, values and stresses of this nighky specialist service.
Cobhair Chloinne starts on BBC ALBA Monday 22nd September at 8.30pm and runs for six consecutive weeks.
