50 year medal awarded to Martyn Morrison at IBMS Scotland AGM
The IBMS Scotland AGM saw the presentation of the 50 year medal awarded to Martyn Morrison for his 50 years of membership. Below is a report from IBMS member Charles Houston, MSc CSci MIBMS on the presentation.
"Martyn Morrison was award his 50 year medal by IBMS Vice President Derek Bishop at the IBMS in Scotland AGM and Scientific meeting meeting held at COSLA conference centre on 26 Nov 2016.
Martyn started work at Bellshill Maternity Hospital as a Junior Laboratory Technician where he was trained in all of the laboratory disciplines, finally settling on Haematology and Blood Transfusion for his Associateship, then Chemical Pathology for his Fellowship.
When the new Monklands Hospital in Airdrie opened in 1977. Martyn applied for and got the Chief's post in Blood Transfusion. Being in charge of the Blood Bank, he became responsible for the Cobe Cell Separator, used initially for Plasma Exchange and latterly for Stem Cell Harvesting. Monklands was thrown into treating the patients from the world's worst E coli O157 crisis in 1996, where he and his small team worked to treat all the patients by plasma exchange. Realising that one Cell Separator was insufficient to treat all of the patients, he asked the manufacturers if they would kindly loan them another machine. This they were happy to do as the news of this outbreak went worldwide, and so no patient had then to wait to be treated. Plasma Exchange and Stem Cell Harvesting took up a lot of his time as some patients had to be treated as an emergency and others required stem cell harvesting at weekends when their CD34 levels peaked.
He finally retired in 2007 after forty years’ service with the NHS but then returned part time for a few years to do some training with the students, a job he relished as he felt it was important to pass on knowledge which he had obtained over the years. He was a guest speaker at Paisley University for several years and he was also the co-author of several papers in Transfusion and Coagulation."
The IBMS congratulates Martyn Morrison on his medal and thanks him for 50 years of dedicated membership. Read more about membership and member benefits with the IBMS.