'Huge concern' over patient safety as NHS Highland struggles to provide

AN Inverness midwife has warned that staff can no longer cope and are "ignored" by managers, in the midst of deepening crises for the NHS in the Highlands.

The worried Raigmore specialist spoke out as acute problems in maternity and radiology departments sank to new depths.

There is unprecedented demand on maternity due to regular transfers from Caithness and an ominous sense of worse to come with Moray mums joining the queue.

NHS Highland this week loses its last interventionist radiologist. Other posts are already vacant and a Scotland-wide problem has led radiologists to rank the crisis a "red alert" with patients left no choice but to travel to Tayside or Grampian for treatment due to gaps.

Radiologists are key to interpreting X-rays and scans, and administering a range of treatments.

A long-serving Raigmore midwife, who did not want to be named for fear of reprisals, said: "Staff aren’t coping. They’re cheesed off. They feel let down and ignored.

"Management aren’t taking our requests seriously. They’re just making commitments with other health trusts to accept these ladies with no real understanding of what’s happening.

"Patients are suffering because they’re not getting the time they need in labour suites. We’re not supported by colleagues in Caithness because we’re taking on their workload. The same will happen with Elgin."

Asked about patient safety, she said: "It’s of huge concern. If you’ve got an obstetric emergency to deal with you’re having to rely on a lot of inexperienced staff to help you out."

All the experienced staff, she claimed, were moving or retiring.

Janette McQuiston of the Unison union said: "NHS Highland has recruited new midwives, starting in September, so this is a step in the right direction."

Liz Gordon of the GMB union said: "Chronic long-term under-funding is untenable. Someone needs to start caring for the staff involved."

On the radiology issue, NHS Highland medical director Dr Rod Harvey said: "We have a series of locums planned for weekdays. Most weeks have two to three days’ coverage. Some weeks we have full coverage and there are still weeks where we don’t yet have cover.

"Where patients have immediate life-threatening conditions we have an arrangement in place with Tayside and Grampian where these patients can be transferred."

In the past year, he said fewer than 10 emergency out-of-hours interventional radiology procedures had been performed at Raigmore, so the number of transfers was likely to be modest.

"We’re satisfied that we have arrangements in place with partner boards for those patients requiring emergency care for haemorrhage control or the drainage of sepsis," he added.

A long-term locum interventional radiologist is due to start in the autumn. An applicant for a "substantive interventional radiologist" post will be interviewed this month and a retired interventional radiologist will work from October, one day a week.

On maternity, a health board spokeswoman said: "Meetings have been held at Raigmore to hear the concerns first hand.

"We fully accept midwifery staffing numbers are under pressure but are pleased that recent recruitment of newly qualified midwives, who’ll be taking up post in the autumn, has been successful.

"In the meantime, bank midwives and healthcare support workers and offer of additional hours are being utilised, where available, to fill the shortfall."

She added: "More specific to Highland, the UHI will pilot a shortened midwifery training programme for registered nurses commencing next February and UHI have already received a great deal of interest from nurses living and working in the NHS Highland area."

Maternity services at Dr Gray’s Hospital in Elgin have been downgraded due to a staff shortage. And it emerged this week that the midwives unit at Aberdeen Maternity Hospital could close until the end of September for the same reason.

In Moray, women with medium to high-risk pregnancies are currently being transferred to Aberdeen and Inverness to give birth.

Dr Grant Baxter, chairman of Scotland’s Royal College of Radiologists, said: "After celebrating 70 years of the NHS, I’d prefer to be speaking about the fantastic contribution radiology has made to modern healthcare.

"If you were in Highland and were in a road traffic accident and had bleeding I would be worried.

"If you were in Highland and had presented with sepsis I would be worried. It’s not just Highland. These issues are being reflected in other health boards."

He said demand for key cancer services had increased 55 per cent in five years while the number of full-time radiologists in Scotland had fallen.

"This is unsustainable. Treatment regimes for cancer patients are almost entirely imaging based. Therefore, treatment decisions are being delayed," he said.

"The constant delay by government to make the appropriate investment by rapidly increasing trainee numbers is very frustrating."

Scotland’s health secretary Jeane Freeman said: "Despite an international shortage of radiologists worldwide, since 2007 we’ve increased the number of clinical radiology consultants by 41 per cent and increased radiography staff by 24.4 per cent.

"We’ll also create an additional 50 specialist training places for clinical radiologists over the next five years."

Commenting on that, and news that Aberdeen’s maternity unit will be temporarily closed until September, Tory Highlands and Islands MSP Ed Mountain said: "Emergency action is needed.

"The closure at Aberdeen will put intolerable pressure on overworked staff."