Recruiting Shropshire hospital staff ‘top priority’
Recruiting more staff is a top priority if Shropshire's hospitals are to turn their fortunes around, their boss has insisted.
The chief executive of the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust will tomorrow tell a board meeting of 'safety and financial risks'.
Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and Telford's Princess Royal Hospital are currently facing urgent enforcement action from the Care Quality Commissioning Group after inspectors raised concerns about care.
Tomorrow's trust meeting may also trigger the night-time closure of A&E at PRH, prompted by staff shortages.
Mr Wright says there is a lack of middle grade medical cover in emergency departments and a shortage of middle grade doctors is 'giving risk to safety' and carrying 'financial risks'.
There is also insufficient consultant capacity in A&Es as there are three whole time equivalent consultants in post rather than the recommended 20.
The hospital trust is currently hoping to recruit further staff and Mr Wright says since the Future Fit hospitals consultation there had been more applications of emergency department consultant jobs.
CT scanner
He will tell the board meeting that, across the trust, there has also been a failure to recruit nurses which has led to staffing issues and a failure to recruit consultants in gastroenterology.
Members of the board will also hear that the CT scanner at the Princess Royal Hospital is 'becoming increasingly unreliable' but contingency plans are in place in case of a failure.
And ophthalmology patients are having to wait longer than the recommended follow up time as they 'may come to harm'. The report adds there have been a number of reported incidents.
In the pathology lab, technology used to determine microbial sensitivity is 'outdated' and 'not fit for purpose'.
The report adds: "We are the only one of 50 Public Health England laboratories to still use the old technology. With increasing microbial antibiotic resistance it is essential that the system provides accurate results. The existing system produces results which are only accurate 83 per cent of the time, so 50 results a day are inaccurate.'"
The cardiac catheter lab also needs replacing and has regular periods when it is out of action requiring repair. A new scanner is now on order.
