Southmead Hospital

A Bristol couple have given birth to the city's first quads for half a century.

28-year-old Maria Avasar gave birth to the four identical girls at Southmead Hospital after just 29 weeks.

Was it at her birth weight that she was less than two pounds? Was she now...

We're only just a couple of minutes.

I can't comment on before I came involved in detail, but the device has had many, many people working on it.

But since we were involved in the UK, which was in around 2014, when Southmead Hospital in Bristol were approached to undertake preclinical testing, so to undertake multiple tests on mannequins and models that they designed and developed with limbs and things another Bristol based company that helps create mannequins and models for medical education and that's when the relationship started with our team the team and I got involved and that's when we involved women kind of with everything we did from the trials so women were involved heavily with development of the trials and what we wanted to look at and the things that were important to them with with kind of how the device was used how we were to communicate with women about it the education and women have always been and are going forward to kind of the center of everything we do the early kind of design from prototypes I can't really comment on because that was done outside of my sphere.

OK, I think it just occurred to me that some of the people listening might not have yet seen a picture or understand what the device is.

So and I know you're going to send me some pictures that I can put in the show notes and so on.

We know there are heaps and heaps more families that need us.

And we did a pilot at Southmead Hospital in Bristol, which is kind of closest to where our head office is, whereby any patient that was diagnosed with any type or grade of brain tumour was automatically referred into our support service at the point of diagnosis.

They could opt out if they wanted to, but instead of it just being a leaflet or it being mentioned in and amongst 500 other things that you're expected to remember amongst the big old stack of leaflets that you get in that point of crisis, Actually, it's taken out of your hands a little bit in that it's with us.

We'll get in touch and you don't have to worry about it.

So they managed to interview him.

So even though they might have gone not guilty, and even though we are genuinely talking about a dead man talking, he gets to have those conversations from the intensive care unit in Southmead Hospital in Bristol, which is amazing, because it means he can implicate those who have caused his demise.

So it's Detective Sergeant Martin Sutcliffe who's literally present during that interview.

And it's really hard, because of course, Detective Sergeant Martin Sutcliffe is basically speaking to a dying man with respect.

So I moved up to the Royal United Hospital in Bath to become deputy when they were in financial difficulties.

Then I moved across to the Southmead Hospital in Bristol as they were about to open a PFI hospital and consolidate two sites into one.

And then more latterly, I've moved into Wales where I've been since 2021. as Director of Finance and that's for a whole health system, which is a bit like an ICB and everything it contains in English terminology, which is what attracted me to the role because there's the opportunity to look at where resources are placed.

So yeah, I've kind of bounced around the South West, South and then more latterly moved a bit more along the M4 to Wales.