Jon Richardson officially opens the new Urology Department at the Royal Lancaster Infirmary.
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00:00 I'm really excited to be welcoming everybody onto the new Urology unit. It's been a long
00:09 time in the making and there's been an absolute team effort from everyone in the Urology department
00:15 and the wider Trust to make this happen. It was really super to welcome John Richardson
00:20 onto the department so that he could officially open it with the ribbon cutting ceremony.
00:25 John of course being a local man, educated locally and still keeping roots locally.
00:32 It's appropriate to have a comedian opening a department in which so much pee will be
00:35 taken. I would obviously say it's nice to be at the opening of a building but the building's
00:42 nothing without the staff and just to be able to say categorically as the least talented,
00:47 least important, least qualified person in the room, everyone who is behind me, in front
00:52 of me, all the staff, you blow my mind. I'm in awe of everyone of you so thank you for
00:56 everything you do. Without further ado, let's cut the ribbon.
01:08 Hello I'm John Richardson, I'm a comedian from Lancaster and I'm totally out of my depth
01:15 here on the new Urology department at Lancaster Infirmary because my cousin Lorraine is a
01:20 member of staff here. She's part of the team that will be here every day saving lives and
01:26 I'm part of the one man team that swans in and has photos done and pretends to be a big
01:31 deal when really I'm totally out of my depth and I don't know what I'm doing. But I have
01:34 learnt today to suture, to catheterise and I've done what I think was called a cystoscopy?
01:43 But I've put cameras in places that I think had I done it to a human being I could have
01:49 had the NHS closed down by the end of today. But I've learnt a lot, I've put things down,
01:54 things that I'll deal with in my own time and I can tell you from half an hour of doing
01:59 it that the staff who do it day in day out here absolutely blow my mind and it's been
02:03 an absolute honour to come and albeit open a new part of the building that looks fantastic
02:09 and is full of technology that will save lives but I'm in no doubt at all that it's the people
02:13 here that save lives and it's been an honour for me to meet some of the people that do
02:17 incredible work as part of the NHS which I'm in absolute awe of.
02:21 The benefits of having a department like this are ultimately multifactorial for the patients.
02:28 So any patient that's come in with a urology problem, blood in the wee, a suspected cancer,
02:35 some problems with their waterworks in general, will be able to come onto the clinic, have
02:40 all of their tests done in the majority, all on the same day and ideally walk away with
02:45 a diagnosis and also with a plan for how they can start to get better.
02:51 It's fantastic to have this new urology unit in Lancaster for the first time in the history
02:57 of the hospital. It's all been brought together in one place and it'll be greatly beneficial
03:03 for the patient. They can have the camera test and the scans and everything at one stop.
03:09 I've just been demonstrating the flexible cystoscopy to staff members as well as to
03:14 some of the patients.
03:16 My name's Lydia McGrath, I'm the Chief Executive of High Bladder Cancer and I'm here with Professor
03:21 Alison Birtle, one of our trustees and one of our medical advisors.
03:25 What we have here in the new department is a way of trying to streamline the pathway
03:29 for patients, not just patients with bladder cancer but patients with urological cancers
03:34 across Morecambe Bay. And that's what we need, we need faster access to tests, we need faster
03:39 access to treatment and I hope that this will really deliver.
03:41 [BLANK_AUDIO]