Careers

Negotiating, managing, and delivering all agreed capital programmes across the whole of the Welsh Blood Service (WBS). Ensuring that the impacts from capital programme activities are maintained within the agreed financial envelope and the associated timescales. This is done by ensuring that best practice project management is applied to all capital schemes to support delivery and implementation into operational services.

The Centralised Resource and Planning team work closely and collaboratively with the objective to create maximum capacity and donor opportunity within the blood collection plan. The Planning department plan, book, and schedule blood donor clinics across Wales. These clinics then form the collection plan created to meet hospital demand.

The Centralised Resourcing team manage the collection team’s clinic rotas, ensuring adequate staff to operate on each clinic every day. This includes co-ordinating all annual leave, sickness, and other absence. They are also responsible for the submission of collection staff pay cards to Payroll.

Encouraging more people across Wales to consider giving blood, platelets or bone marrow for the first time is covered by:

The communications team who use local and national media to educate and inspire donations or advocacy for the Service.

Community partnerships who create relationships with national organisations that can be used in local communities across Wales.

The local engagement team who promote upcoming donor sessions with local communities, using key advocates and influencers to maximise publicity.

The Donor Contact Centre is a multi-channel operation, interacting with donors via inbound and outbound calls, SMS, email, letter, and social media.

The key purpose of the Donor Contact Centre is to be the first point of contact for blood donors in Wales, key functions include, booking appointments, answering questions, seeking feedback, and keeping consistent lines of communication with our donors.

Our key aim is to deliver an exceptional standard of service and care for our donors whilst ensuring hospital blood stocks are consistently at the optimum levels.

The department provides soft FM (Facilities Maintenance) to all the WBS sites including cleaning, security, portering and reception duties, the management of clinical waste and site maintenance of the external grounds including pest control.

The Facilities department is made up of three distinct areas: the Facilities Team, Porters, and Stores. The Facilities Team and Porters work to ensure the Welsh Blood Service provides a suitable environment for donors, services users, and staff while Stores work to procure and supply many of the business-critical items that are used daily across the organisation.

The General Services department provides a coordinating and business support function across the WBS. It supports WBS strategic planning and performance and responds to identified specific business needs, leading on project management and Service Improvement, advising on Health and Safety, and supporting the day-to-day business needs of each WBS department and the Senior Management Team.

The Innovation and Improvement Hub is made up of the following areas:

Programmes & Projects – The iHub is responsible for ensuring the successful delivery of a wide range of programmes and projects at the Welsh Blood Service (WBS). This includes the scoping and planning of new programmes/projects, supporting the delivery of programmes/projects, and providing a governance and risk management framework to ensure that programmes/projects are completed successfully.

Service Improvement – The iHub works in collaboration with colleagues across the WBS to deliver improvements aimed at enhancing the quality and efficiency of services for our donors and customer hospitals.  It works with our staff to utilise their knowledge and experience to find the best solutions for improvement and provide the guidance needed to bring these into realisation.

QA Systems staff work in partnership with all departments across the Welsh Blood Service (WBS) to ensure patient safety is upheld by continuously meeting the quality standards applicable to blood, blood components, tissues, and cells.  The teams also monitor performance against these standards and are committed to supporting a continuous cycle of learning and quality improvement within the Welsh Blood Service.

The team covers a wide range of activities which are defined within the WBS Quality Management System. These include – Audit, Business Continuity, Change Management, Document Control, Incident Management, Quality Improvement, Regulatory Affairs, Risk Management and Validation.

The RD&I team support the embedding of Research, Development, and Innovation (RD&I) activity as a core activity within WBS. Encouraging a culture of innovation, developing, and promoting WBS as a centre of choice for academic and industry collaboration. Leading on governance and providing expert advice and guidance on policy and procedure.

The Transport & Logistics department is responsible for the delivery of core logistical services for the organisation, including, delivery of blood and blood products to customer hospitals, collection of blood donations from donation clinic, transportation of blood, commercial products and stock between the Talbot Green base and the Stock Holding Unit located in Wrexham. Siting and set-up of the Mobile Donation clinic trailers, management of the vehicles in the transport fleet, including involvement in design of new bespoke vehicles, managing on-site fuel supply for transport department fleet vehicles, and providing transport support to other NHS Organisations, e.g., Public Health Wales.

The Automated Testing is where all the blood donor samples are tested, using a range of different microbiology and serology tests, to ensure the blood being processed is disease free and safe for patient transfusion. Three distinct sections are focused on different areas of testing: a) Serology, responsible for blood grouping and red cell antibody screening, b) Microbiology, screening for infectious disease markers and c) Bacteriology, monitoring platelets for bacterial contamination. The laboratory also provides screening regimes for antenatal services, for all Health Boards across South Wales.

The role of the BHT is to support the safe and appropriate use of blood in Wales. The work is overseen by the Blood Health National Oversight Group (BHNOG). The BHT also play a key role in hospital communications with Transfusion Practitioners, development of educational resources and programmes for transfusion across Wales and development of national standardised transfusion documentation.

The Clinical Services (CS) department support the WBS and wider NHS to provide a transfusion service focused on high quality health and care. The department is responsible for clinical governance within the WBS and oversees all clinical aspects of blood component donors, which provides blood for the whole of Wales, stem cells internationally and manages the Blood Health Team (BHT). In addition to clinically led routine service provision, the department provides clinical expertise for individual donors, and patients across Wales with more difficult and unusual transfusion requirements. The team also contribute to UK, European and International groups which update and progress guidance and development of blood transfusion and transplantation medicine.

The Collections teams are responsible for the safe and efficient collection of blood and blood components across Wales.  They operate in venues across the whole of Wales from church halls, community centres and office buildings to supermarkets. Blood mobile vans are also used in some areas. The teams on average are required to collectively collect around 350 units of whole blood per day to meet hospital demand. There are 4 prominent locations for the Collection teams in Bangor, Wrexham, Dafan and the Head Quarters at Talbot Green.

The Manufacturing & Distribution Department is responsible for the processing whole blood received from donors, into its constituent components (red cells, platelets, and fresh frozen plasma), storing them under appropriate conditions and distributing them to customer hospitals as requested on a daily basis. The department consists of a Manufacturing laboratory and two Distribution laboratories, one in Talbot Green, South Wales and one in Wrexham, North Wales. This department also distributes commercial blood derived medicines throughout Wales.

Quality Assurance Laboratory keeps our blood donors and patients safe by offering advice and guidance to the whole of the Welsh Blood Service. The mobile teams collect blood from donors across Wales that is manufactured at the Talbot Green Headquarters into blood components for transfusion to Patients in Hospitals in Wales. The QA Laboratory samples from all the manufactured components, check the quality meets the required standards so patients receive transfusions that are safe and clinically effective.  The team are responsible for calibration and validation within the Laboratory.

The RCI Laboratory is the Reference Centre for blood group serology testing for Wales where complex blood grouping and antibody identification is performed by highly specialised Biomedical Scientists. This includes identification of antibodies which can cause Haemolytic Disease of the Foetus & New-born, assessment of the antibody level to assist in the management of the pregnancies as well as foetal maternal haemorrhage estimation to ensure pregnant women receive appropriate clinical care. The Laboratory also houses the Welsh Assessment of Serological Proficiency Scheme, an accredited Quality Assurance Scheme which is used throughout the UK for monitoring testing and result interpretation competency.

The SHU laboratory, is the WBS distribution facility for North Wales, based in Wrexham. It supplies blood and blood components to the hospitals in North Wales and routes blood collected in North Wales to the manufacturing facility in South Wales. Deliveries are made regularly by WBS transport to each hospital.

The UK National External Quality Assessment Service (NEQAS) for Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics (H&I) provide a specialist external quality assessment (EQA) service for laboratories around the world supporting organ transplantation. EQA monitors laboratory test performance using ‘blind’ samples analysed as if they were patient samples to ensure testing is comparable, safe and clinically useful to a patient no matter where the testing is performed.

The Welsh Bone Marrow Donor Registry (WBMDR) oversees the recruitment, HLA typing, donor searching and haematopoietic stem cell donation procurement for patients. The Registry consists of HLA typed volunteer donors, which can be searched to find a match for patients requiring a stem cell transplant. The service is provided in the UK and internationally for patients around the world.

The WHAIS Service provides laboratory testing required to support haematopoietic stem cell and organ transplantation programmes. In addition, the laboratory provides genetic testing for a number of human leukocyte antigens (HLA) and immune-related genes to support disease diagnosis and management and plays a role in the investigation of transfusion-related reactions.

The work involved in the support of transplantation programmes includes HLA typing patients and donors, assessing the closeness of the match and helping to select the most appropriate donor for a particular patient. The laboratory also performs HLA antibody screening and crossmatching, to ensure that there are no antibodies in the recipient which could reject the transplant.

The Welsh Transplantation & Immunogenetics Laboratory provides services in support of transplantation and immunogenetic testing. The WTAIL is made up of

The Welsh Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics (H&I) Service (WHAIS)

Welsh Bone Marrow Donor Registry

UK NEQAS for H&I