1

CJG

So, I take it they’re still paying hundreds and thousands of pounds each much on locum Psychiatrists for the Castel then? This is a major factor to this so called ‘black hole’.
The ones who abuse the over the time, stay for a few weeks until they’ve milked the system enough, all the while leaving the GENUINE patients (and there’s not that many believe me!) who need help back to square one, having to see yet another doctor?

When are you going to offer more attractive packages to the decent doctors who want to stay here permanently with their families, instead of these useless locums who are here to do nothing more than get money?

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3

DNA

CJGs comments pale compared to some of the practices undertaken in other HSSD departments just to keep functioning. All related to the inept housing and renumeration packages on offer to qualified medical and clinical staff.
Lets be honest here, HSSD is dying. Currently it is in the ICU with every lead , line and medication being used in an attempt keep it alive. But there are other future options for this island of a small population. But pride prevents you from brushing the wool from infront of your eyes.
The public should demand the truth and the press should investigate on their behalf

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5

Starry

Completely agree with you geezer boy, the first people to go will be nurses. closing beds will have a knock on effect for the entire hospital staff including domestic staff, porters, admin etc. unemployment will rise. there will be longer waiting lists for elective surgery, patients will suffer and i am sorry to say…people will die.

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7

Dave Jones

DNA

First of all, we have always had a hospital and it has always been a first class health service for the people of Guernsey, The PEH was run for years with a handful of managers, some dedicated Matrons who protected their nurses from the administration and lots of local staff. The rot set in when we started to adopt everything the NHS in the UK was doing, as so called best practice. More senior staff from the NHS were employed by our health service, many for good reason but instead of getting them to adapt to the way we did things in Guernsey. Things were subtly changed over the years to the way those who came here had been used to and good common sense practices done in the Guernsey way went out the window. Local staff left as they were forced to work under the new NHS inspired regimes and they were replaced by necessity by more and more staff from elsewhere, which led to the hemorrhaging of even more local staff. The truth is, it isn’t just one single cause; it is number of things over a number of years. One example was this ridiculous agenda for change that saw our auxiliary nurses worse off than they were before, financially that is. So we started to loose them, many had worked at the PEH for years. We had lots of local people working as cleaners in our hospitals until someone came here from somewhere else and told them they were doing it all wrong. My sister in law worked at the PEH for 17 years as a cleaner, she left because some jobs worth from elsewhere who had been on the island for nearly ten minutes, told her she should be dusting in little circles, not as she had been doing all her working life at the hospital. I still have several members of my family who work for H&SSD who have seen a marked deterioration in morale in the last few years, as front line services are squeezed and the number of those supervising increases. Our nurses and auxiliaries don’t feel valued and are always the last to be considered by some at the top of the greasy pole. One example is the new clinical block, nobody bothered to design into that building a changing area for the nurses; they have been getting changed in the toilets for goodness sake. Their swimming pool which was given to them by public donation has been taken from them, their subsidized meals have been removed, and in fact those on night duty will struggle now to get a hot meal. One nurse told me last week that 3 patients fell out of bed on her ward because there was not enough staff to make sure they didn’t. So the hospitals most precious assets, our nurses, come top of the list when it comes to having any privileges removed from them and bottom of the list when it comes to specific facilities designed for them. As for housing the States has spent tens of millions on housing health staff, I might also remind you that those staff in nursing accommodation, DON’T need housing licenses so I don’t want to hear that old chestnut being roasted again. We have not refused a single license application for specialist staff for a very long time. As for pay, if we spent a fraction of the money we use for relocation packages to bring people here, on improving the pay and conditions for local staff we might stand a chance of getting some of the locals back into the health service. Of course we will always need specialist nurses and other top professionals but I believe we could start to improve things by ditching all this NHS best practice rubbish which we happily lived without for years.

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9

Landowner

Surely if there was a big shake up in how much money was given to the single mums and the people who refuse to work there would be more to spend on the health service? I have been working for 38 years now and last year was signed off for 1 week with flu. I received something in the region of £128 from social security. This was my first claim ever. I have been led to believe that unemployment benefit is approximately £180 a week. We need to get our priorities sorted and spend money where it is needed and not on people who are too lazy to work

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11

PJW

Surely this is an area that we should be looking at getting together with Jersey, any need for two Path Labs, Analyst Depts,could we not have specalist in certain areas and Jsy others that would benefit both Islands, purchasing power re medical supplis , drugs etc.

Short term contracts that get renewed every six months and have been going for 4 years now, why not employ on a proper contract?

Travel off island, why employ a travel agent to do it, a travel office within the states using our airline would make a huge saving.

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13

DNA

Dave Jones raises some interesting points but stepping back to the way things used to be done (in some not all areas I hope) is not what a politician should be exercising. Backwards is not the answer with a growing population which dmands more from its health service than in years past. What needs addressing is exactly what is sustainable for a population of 64K and then what to do with the remainder of the healthcare requirements the population of Guernsey needs. backwards is not the answer.
Regarding the future employment of Guerns with HSSD, unless the average Guern wants to be restricted to a manual worker position, then the States needs to seriously consider funding university level education for Guerns as currently they have to pay overseas tuition fees – which are well above the ranges of the average Jo. Guernsey NEEDS the specialist trained staffing in Nursing, Radiology, pathology and all the other ‘Ologies’ becasue quite frankly, you will never be able to source locals trained to do these if they never get trained inthe first place. Training means funding. And once they have worked elsewhere – they will undoubtably not earn a sufficient salary in Guernsey to by a house or start a family. The process repeats itself in a never ending downward spiral. Non wealthy Guerns will eventually be relagated to the untrained manual worker where the skilled staff are from those families with the funds to educate their offspring away from the island.
Sounds cruel, but it is the eventual outcome from a policy of non intergration with the UK for many of the service needed for the average Guern. These being Health and Education. An educated society is a wealthy society and a healthy society is a happy society.
So in the end, Dave is correct in his summation that the problem is multi-facitated. But it is the outsider who can see through the mist. Don’t discount an outsiders comments – acept them and ponder them. If they are commenting, it is because they actually do care and want to see improvement.

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15

Dave Jones

Gilthead

I have enough to do at Housing and the PC. H&SSD has its own board and it is for them to bring ideas to the States as to how we can cut through all the NHS style bureaucracy that has been shipped in from elsewhere and return our Health service to the un cluttered, sensible and functional service that this island and its people can afford. Away from all this so called NHS best practice, which in my view and the view of some of our local nurses has only helped to drive up costs and increase the number of hospital managers. We are obsessed as a civil service and as a government on introducing everything from the UK. A country incidentally that has some of the very worst public services in the western world. Unfortunately much of this has been imported by people who have come to work in Guernsey and Health has in my view been far too eager to embrace all this alleged best practise. Fine if you have a budget that can throw billions at it, we don’t, the publics contribution to health and social services on a tiny island like Guernsey is absolutely massive, apart from what the taxpayer throws in from the front end, about 110 Million per year, they also contribute massive amounts to the Medical specialist group for medical cover and in addition they also pay for their GP visits, If they go to A&E there will be additional charges for treatment and if its on a weekend those charges will be substantial. They will pay extra for the Ambulance that takes them if they need one and of course for any medication they might need. So you can see that what is poured into H&SSD and the MSG is huge. What I think needs to happen is that the Social services side of health should be separated out, in order that we can see exactly what the Health budget and the true costs are. At the moment it all comes out of one big pot and that does tend to skew the true picture. I truly feel sorry for Hunter Adam and his board because many of the problems they have now were building up over the last Ministers time at H&SSD.

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