EPR Business as Usual team member, Stephen Wiggins recently celebrated 40 years' service with CHFT!

Stephen - in peaked hat -  used to work in the Pathology lab before joining The Health Informatics Service and now he’s part of the joint EPR Business As Usual Back office team.

Stephen’s wife of 32 years, Elaine (pictured on Stephen’s left in grey) and colleagues from the Pathology Labs and THIS helped Stephen celebrate.

Denise Drew, from THIS Clinical Systems Manager, tells us more including how they knew about Chernobyl before it was even on the news! 

Stephen started work in the Biochemistry Dept in Pathology in 1979 as trainee MLSO (Medical Laboratory Scientific Officer), and was State Registered a year later. He  was based at the Halifax General Hospital, but could also work at the Royal Halifax Infirmary.

He learned to take blood from patients and would often travel to the wards at Northowram Hospital to collect blood. His forte was collecting blood from patients with small veins.

He worked in the Radio-Isotopes department in Halifax for a while and he was there when Chernobyl had happend in 1986.  The dept  knew before the disaster was on the news as the background radiation count had gone up.

Worked in the Bacteriology Department to cover for long-term sickness of a staff colleague, then immediately transferred to the Histology / Cytology Department to again cover for long-term sickness. When they returned, Stephen was given the options of return to Chemical Pathology or Microbiology or stay in Histology. Stephen remained in Histology and whilst here he took a number of Management courses.

As he had a knowledge of databases, he wrote a database to allow indexing of all the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to allow accreditation of the Department. This included all of the reagents and the suppliers.

Stephen’s expertise was recognised, and one of the Consultant Pathologists liaised with Computer Services in order for him to act as a bridge between the Departments should there be a need for it. Spent a few months working one day a week in Computer Services learning MUMPS and the Patient Administration System (PAS).

Applied for and obtained the post of PAS Support in the year 2000, and was the first point of contact with IT software for the Laboratory. Assisted the Laboratory or made amendments to relevant computer programs to allow the system to keep up with National or local changes.

Became System Manager for the Huddersfield Master Patient Index (MPI) during the period when the web-based PAS system (PASWeb) was introduced. After implementation of PASWeb Stephen moved back to PAS and PASWeb support and maintenance. With the introduction of Cerner Millennium in 2017, Stephen became and remains the EPR System Tester.