No staff, so premature baby has to be fed in UK

Saturday 15th November 2008, 9:30AM GMT.

STAFF shortages in the PEH pharmacy meant that a mother and premature baby had to be flown to the UK because intravenous feeds could not be prepared in Guernsey.

But confirming the incident yesterday, Health minister Hunter Adam (pictured) said that the cost had been £37,000, not the £60,000 claimed by HSSD board member Mike Hadley.

Deputy Hadley warned that there would be more such cases.

‘Because of the shortages of staff, there will be an increase in procedures which cannot be carried out in the island,’ he said.

‘The issues of remuneration and housing licences do compromise patient care.’

Deputy Hadley broke ranks over next year’s cash allocation which, he was adamant, was not enough to maintain existing services, let alone meet aspirations.

But Deputy Adam was quick to dismiss the claim.

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View more: Health news, Hunter Adam news, Premature Baby news.

1
Paul

November 15, 2008 at 10:46 pm

This is stunning. We have sent a nurse back home to save 6 grand whilst at the same time spend over six times this amount to feed a baby? I don’t need anybody to shoot me down over this but objectively has to be the main point over this:

What the hell is going on here exactly? This Island is melting down! Those that are in power seem happy to smile whilst at the same time talk about what is wrong. The only thing that is wrong is the fact that the people desperately need to wake up. It is too easy to squander money when you haven’t earn’t it yourself. What we need as an Island is people to treat the people’s purse as though it is their own. Any takers cos the majority don’t deserve to be where they are at! I know a few, a minority, that are an asset. More are most welcome?

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2
Wil

November 16, 2008 at 12:30 pm

In my hospital stay i was refused pain relief during labour because it didnt have the facilities available! “Sorry” they said to me, we only have two beds for painrelief in this hospital and they are already taken so badluck. Made me so fearful for the health of the baby, if anything went wrong they wouldnt have the facilities to save him/her, makes me wonder how many babies may have died on the way to the UK – whats that your say Hunter Adam? badluck for the baby too!

An interesting thing to note is that if the baby did die in the plane or in the UK it would become a UK statistic which would ironically be used by politicians to say that Guernsey healthcare is statistically better than UK -Whats that you say Hunter Adam? a win win?

These are human lives we are talking about, let the nurses in so that they can nurse, let us have doctors too….it may be your life they save…or lose on the way to the UK.

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3
Ebenezer

November 17, 2008 at 11:12 am

If you think this is bad why not ask what the HSSD spending is on permanent staff to agency staff.

There are a number of departments (the Pharmacy being one of them) where full time salaries are so uncompetative that the HSSD have to employ agency staff at about twice the cost to fill the gap. These staff rotate though the PEH on a fairly regular basis, are paid more than their locally qualified equivilents and do not acquire experience needed in their time to make them as efficent as local nurses who have been working in this environment for years.

There needs to be an independent review of the remuneration of qualified staff within the HSSD and incentives given to bring back any qualified Staff from the financial sector to the HSSD. In the short term this will have an effect of increasing costs but as permanent positions are filled the reliance on agency staff well be reduced and the costs will go down in parallel.

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4
Bungle

November 17, 2008 at 12:55 pm

Considering both people in question joined Beau Sejour 18 months or so ago, I don’t think its Beau Sejour’s fault !!

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