Jamie Loncaster Memorial Fund
Autumn half term 2017 saw the return of the CRY mobile screening team to our region. The date had been in the diary for almost a year and all 200 places on offer had been booked prior to the event. The £7,000 cost was covered by past donations to Jamie’s Fund at CRY.
Ralph Knox, the CRY van driver / screening coordinator arrived at South Hunsley School at 4pm on Monday 30th October and met with Graham Loncaster to set up the venue. The caretaking staff at South Hunsley School and Sixth Form College had already created a basic layout for the event within the newly formed multi-use indoor sports and dining facility inside the Sport Centre.
The space was vast, but with careful positioning of screens and tables a good sized reception/registration area was formed along with three ECG bays, an Ultrasound bay and a separate room was set up for the consultant cardiologist to review the ECG print outs and talk to patients.
Ralph brought with him all the necessary equipment needed to run the event. In came ECG machines and associated tables and equipment, along with fold out / pop up beds and all necessary
ancillary items such as pillows and additional privacy screens. By 5pm the room was ready and the Sports Centre staff locked the room for overnight safety.
The next morning the full team arrived at 8.30am to prepare for the two days ahead. They had all travelled from various parts of the UK the previous evening and stayed locally at the Premier Inn at Hessle. The team consisted of Ralph & Alice as coordinators / registration team with Teresa, Sheila and Helen carrying out the ECG work. Donna was in charge of any required ultrasound tests and assisted with all the weighing and measuring of patients. Consultant Cardiologist, Brashar was the CRY Research Fellow in attendance and was joined by an MSC student, Liz to evaluate the ECG print outs and talk to patients.
Graham & Jenny joined the team for most of the two days and transported them to and from the hotel, as well as providing lunch for the team each day. They chatted to a few of the people who had attended for the free heart screening and spent some time promoting the event live on social media to fill the spaces available when people failed to turn up. Sadly that statistic always seems to be around 10% for these events. They ensured the CRY team made it to the local station on time to catch their various trains back home to London, Birmingham and Norfolk.
Over the two days, the team screened 201 young people. Of those screened, 3 had an additional ultrasound echocardiogram and one person was referred to their GP for further investigation. CRY statistics show that 1:100 people screened will be found to have an irregularity with their heart and 1:300 will have a potentially life-changing condition. These statistics are seemingly borne out by the results of this two day event.
Graham Loncaster
