'Voices must be heard over A&E closure move'

The Northern Trust has announced plans to downgrade the A&E departments at Whiteabbey and Mid-Ulster hospitals to minor injury units from next Monday due to safety concerns. Antrim Area Hospital and the Causeway Hospital in Coleraine are expected to deal with the overspill of patients.

But one local woman, who works at Whiteabbey Hospital and does not want to be named, contacted the Times to voice her concerns about the proposed changes.

And she has urged the local community to lend their support to hospital staff and asked local elected representatives to call a public meeting in order to protest against the transfer of services.

The woman expressed fears that the move could compromise the safety of patients and said she was "deeply concerned" that Antrim will be unable to cope with the increased workload.

"I was shocked and dismayed by the speed of the proposed transfer of services, which seems incredibly hasty to say the least, as no provision has been made for transfer of patients and no arrangements to allocate displaced staff have been made," she said.

"Staff are stressed out and under-resourced, discharges are often hasty and care in the community is not always what it should be. I have spoken to nursing staff coming off duty who have stated that they are just glad that they haven't killed anybody.

"There are senior nursing staff off sick with stress induced illnesses, caused by lack of staff, under-resourcing and inadequate bed availability resulting in falling standards of care. Staff are distressed and bewildered, worried about their own futures and about the future for our patients."

The woman said that staff at Whiteabbey and Mid-Ulster hospitals should be given time to rearrange their lives and to come to terms with the proposed changes.

She added: "We have mere days in which to protest and make our voices heard, so let us do it now. The staff of Whiteabbey Hospital and indeed the Mid-Ulster hospital are suffering. They feel undervalued and demoralised, and no-one in the Trust management team seems to care."

Meanwhile, a nurse who has worked at Whiteabbey Hospital for many years has claimed that Antrim Area Hospital is already struggling to cope with patient levels.

The woman, who didn't want to be identified for fear of losing her job, said: "They (the Trust) are saying they've got 20 extra beds at Antrim, yet we get patients being transferred here at two, three and four in the morning because there are no beds for them at Antrim. Antrim can't cope. There are people lying on trollies for 48 or even 72 hours, but this seems to be all down to management budgets, not patient care. They should stop and think about what they're doing."

"We had no forewarning at all. Nobody knew anything about this until it appeared in the media. All the staff are just totally flabbergasted. We need our politicians and the local community to speak up to get this stopped," another angry hospital employee told the Times.

The Northern Health Trust has stressed that the move to downgrade A&E services at Whiteabbey Hospital will go ahead on May 24 as planned in order to "ensure the safety of patients."

"In recent weeks it has become clear that we could not continue to support emergency services at four hospital sites safely. This meant bringing forward plans to reduce services at Mid-Ulster and Whiteabbey.

"We are sorry for the no doubt significant inconvenience to the staff affected. Ideally we would have wanted more time to introduce these reforms, but the safety of maintaining emergency services was our overriding concern," a spokesperson said.

She stressed that meetings will be held with union representatives and individual members of staff to discuss the options available to them.

For more coverage and reaction see this week's Times...