Nurse shortage could mean loss of hospital beds
Tuesday 31st March 2009, 11:30AM BST.
STAFF shortages could lead to beds being lost at the Princess Elizabeth Hospital.
When asked whether it planned to close 14 surgical beds, the Health and Social Services Department yesterday said it had no ‘immediate’ intention to reduce any of the 50 currently available.
‘However, there are indeed staffing problems,’ said a spokesman.
‘Which does mean that we are having to monitor the situation and may need to review the matter in due course.’
The spokesman did not say what had led to the staffing problems, what they were or how many short of the required complement the department was.
It is understood that if beds were closed it would not affect emergency operations, but it could lead to a longer wait for planned procedures.
Potentially, it could eventually lead to people being flown off-island for operations, putting further strain on that part of the department’s budget.
Former Health and Social Services board member Mike Hadley said the shortage of nurses was due to a combination of pay rates and an unhelpful housing policy.
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How is this possible; is it just an excuse to cut back on resources or utter incompetence from their HR/Recruitment dept.
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Again health services suffer through someones incompetence, and they want to build a mariner for super yachts get you’re priorities right States
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What is the truth behind this story? I have a niece who works in the health service and she doesn’t think housing licences are a huge problem as the majority of non-local nurses are young people who want to travel and have no intention of staying for long.
There are some who would like to stay but not many. The nurses living in the accommodation provided by the hospital can stay there forever if they want to and the rent is cheap – even married couples have accommodation. There is not provision for children though so those with children need a housing licence and this is, i expect, where the problems of longer licences comes from as people don’t want to uproot their families for 5 years. This problem is the same throughout Guernsey though and not a special problem for nurses.
She did say that a lot of the nurses do not stay for even a year though (they get a substantial bonus if they stay a year with more after 2 years if they work in a place which is considered short of nurses nationwide, like mental health). The real problem according to her and her friends is the work/life balance as they are regularly always being asked to cancel days off and do extra shifts at short notice. This is because there is a high sickness rate in some areas caused by allegedly bullying and harrassment from some medical staff and managers. However, if this is true, surely someone is looking into this?
Perhaps this needs looking into further. My niece is very happy in her job and although the money is not great when compared with say the finance sector, it is better than the UK nurses get as the unions have recently negotiated a 3 year pay deal which is, she says, a little above the UK one. Nurses don’t go into the job for the money but it does remain important especially with the credit crunch and the cost of housing over here but one could argue that this is even more important if the island is to continue to recruits local people to train as nurses.
What the media needs to ask is whether there are operations being cancelled and if so why. The mental health services are still in turmoil which hasn’t changed for years. We don’t need the rest of the hospital to get into difficulties. Deputy Hadley shouldn’t have left the health services he should have stayed and then been in a position to change things surely?
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