My heart assembly
Millie Hama-Coombes from Barts Heart Centre writes about inspiring the next generation.
Last month I had the enormously fun opportunity of hosting morning assembly at St Charles Primary School in Ladbroke Grove, West London.
I was there to talk to key stage one and two pupils about the heart, how it works and how to keep it healthy.
Visits like this are an important part of Barts Heart Centre’s prevention programme, which has been running for about a year and is being led by two of our consultants, Dr Riyaz Patel and Professor Adam Timmis.
The programme, is all about equipping 10-12 year olds with important knowledge about the heart and what happens when things go wrong, in the hope it’ll prevent many of them from needing services like ours in the future.
It was a great pleasure to talk to the children about my job as a specialist cardiac radiographer, including the skills you need to be able to care for others and just how rewarding a career in cardiology can be.
I hope I have inspired one or two of the pupils to follow in my footsteps.
Over the next 12 months, we hope to give many more Heart Centre staff the opportunity to visit schools and other community groups across North East London.
We’re incredibly ambitious, and want to visit each year six class in the three boroughs we work in - Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest and Newman - plus schools in the City of London.
If you’d like to find out more about the programme; want to get involved in it or know a school or other group we could visit, please let me know or email sara.waite@nhs.net.
I left assembly that day energised by the enthusiasm of the pupils I met and incredibly proud to have represented Barts Health and all its talented staff.
I hope I have - in my own small way - made a difference to the lives of young Londoners and the future of cardiology too.