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Reduced anxiety, less travel and increased capacity – a few benefits that new community blood test clinics for children are providing.

There are now three clinics running in North East Lincolnshire – once a week at Raj Medical Centre, Laceby Road, Grimsby and Scartho Medical Centre, Springfield Road, Grimsby and fortnightly at the Roxton Practice, Pelham Road, Immingham.

Each clinic sees about 20 children and the blood tests are carried out by advanced healthcare assistants who are specially trained in the field. Assisting them is also a play specialist who is on hand to distract the child.

Sandra Fletcher, team leader of the paediatric community team in Grimsby, said: “The aim of bringing the paediatric blood clinics into the community is so families can access services closer to home and it helps to reduce the number of children having to access the hospital.

“Previously if a child attended the hospital for a blood test, in some cases, they would wait longer as a local anaesthetic cream would be applied to the skin where blood is taken which would result in a further wait until the area is numb.

“Now in the community the cream can be prescribed by a GP, collected and applied by the parent prior to attending the clinic. This makes it a much quicker and efficient service.

“We also aim to reduce travel cost for families which is proving successful for those with children in Immingham who would have had to travel to Grimsby hospital.”

Other benefits to the community clinics include:

• Reduced anxiety
• Room to expand and add more clinics in the future
• Flexibility to see more children if needed.

Jonathan Greenacre, of Grimsby, brought his nine-year-old son Joe to Scartho Medical Centre for a blood test.

He said: “Although the travel was a little further for us than the hospital, we were able to put the cream on Joe at home so he was seen straight away and the process was done within a few minutes.”