Pathology departments affected by NHS cyber attack
Following the recent cyber-attack on NHS computers, we would like to thank all our members who worked hard to support patients through the crisis.
We spoke to IBMS NE Regional Council member Debra Padgett about what happened in her department at her NHS Trust.
She explained how as of mid-morning on Friday, it started when two computers in haematology and immunology were infected with the virus.
She said, “By 2pm on Friday, Pathology was put into complete shutdown with all IT turned off and disconnected from the network. We were isolating the biochemistry analysers to run urgent tests manually, as obviously A&E and ITU patients still needed treatment. Routine work came to a standstill, and we were unaware of what was happening in the world. We were working in isolation. Over the next few hours we learned this had gone national.”
The virus had infected ICE (pathology requesting and reporting service), so we were back to using pen and paper. Labs continued to push urgent work through, and there was no idea of how long this was going to last.”
With all the Trust computer systems going down as early as Friday afternoon, all of their networked servers were shut down until they could be checked and safely brought back online. The team put in long hours to get patients their results quickly and efficiently with no access to IT systems.
Without IT, all patients requiring blood needed additional samples to confirm their blood group as well as a serological crossmatch and all labelling had to be handwritten, all of which takes much longer than usual. With the staff manually taking photocopies of patient requests and phoning the wards, it was a crisis situation that pathology departments in hospitals across the UK faced.
Debra added, “There wasn’t a pathology department that wasn’t affected. Getting the service up and running again was the most important thing. Each department had a major incident plan and we went straight into that, triaging samples for urgency on receipt, they did it swiftly and efficiently.
Our IT team have worked all weekend, day and night, to recover our systems so I must say a special ‘thank you’ to them. Given the magnitude of the situation we found ourselves in on Friday afternoon, we have had relatively small levels of disruption to our services which is a real achievement.”
Having a major incident plan is essential, but professionalism and teamwork is what made this crisis show how dedicated pathology staff are to patient care.
Ian Pearson, the Pathology Information and Performance Manager commented, “The staff need to be congratulated on their hard work and commitment to the patients, which is what everyone’s done. People coming in on days off and doubling up on shifts to make sure systems and patients weren’t affected. In situations like this, it all comes down to the goodwill and professionalism of the staff.”
Many departments in NHS hospitals are still struggling to recover from this cyber attack. Expressing her well wishes for pathology departments around the country which have been similarly affected, Debra added, “I hope they’ve recovered as quickly as we have. I’d like to say thank you to a fantastic pathology team who pulled together. They have always had the interest of patients as top priority and our teams have gone above and beyond to get our systems back up and running and to continue to deliver safe and effective care to our patients.”
Commenting on the crisis, IBMS president Ian Sturdgess CSci FIBMS said, “This is a highly timely reminder that pathology has a key role in acute care and the diagnosis, monitoring and management of conditions. I would like to thank all our members working at affected hospitals for their ongoing commitment to providing safe, high quality patient care under these difficult circumstances.”
If you want to share your experience with the NHS cyber-attack, contact news@ibms.org.