As someone who's family connections with Blood Biking in Surrey and South London goes back 40 years! First on a bike, then a car and now controlling. I'll make some observations below:
I have never quite seen the logic of blood biking, given that
- the NHS already employs people to drive stuff about
NHS Blood and Transplant have a working hours service and a very limited on call out of hours for serious incidents. Outside of these cases overnight you either use an ambulance or a taxi which is either a limited resource or expensive to go from Tooting Bloodbank to say Canterbury at 2am. Also see below for the different types of items transported, can you be confident of the paperwork if transported by taxi or what happens if the ambulance needs to divert to a heart attack?
- riding a bike at night or in bad weather is not something to be taken lightly. A car or van would be a better option
The concept was founded by bikers but that doesn't mean that four wheel vehicles are not common. In fact last year 47% of the surrey and south london runs were done by volunteers in their own car by comparison 20% were on the volunteers bike, the remainder were the fleet liveried vehicles which are both bikes and cars. Equally at 8pm getting from Tooting to Royal London by bike is significantly quicker than car. if the temperature is low then every run is in a car.
- you need some sort of advanced rider qualification before they’ll even consider you.
Agreed, this is part of their risk assessment and can be an issue. However it is better that the parcel arrives than extra patients and demand.
- obviously, there’s only so much stuff you can carry on a bike.
Not all of what they carry is bulk blood or platelets, though it is most of what they transport. You have to remember that most transport is by the routine NHS daytime deliveries, the out of hours is either an individual patient demand or higher than anticipated demand. Orders of more than one or two boxes to an individual hospital are unusual and the liveried bikes can typically take two.
Originally calls were often to take a sample to a lab at a different hospital, now it can be reagents from one lab to another. Also it can be medical notes from a nursing home to a hospital.
There are also day time roles now collecting breast milk donations or delivering blood between a hospital and the local air ambulance, taking any unused blood back that night so that it doesn't expire.