Staffing crisis in a third of A&E units
Victoria Macdonald
Health and Social Care Editor
As the accident and emergency unit at Queen Mary’s hospital in Kent closes due to staff shortages, a Channel 4 News investigation reveals a third of hospitals are struggling with the same problem.
In an extremely rare move, the board of Queen Mary’s hospital in Sidcup, Kent, have today announced that they are to close their accident and emergency and maternity departments from the end of November because of a staffing crisis, writes Social Affairs Correspondent Victoria Macdonald.
The chief executive, Dr Chris Streather, said there is a serious shortage of emergency medicine middle and junior grade doctors, and midwives. In an earlier press statement he said: “We can’t take a risk that this situation would become unsustainable during the winter months.”
But today Channel 4 News can reveal that hospitals throughout England are also facing similar problems. Under a Freedom of Information request we have discovered more than a third of trusts who responded have a shortage of middle grade doctors in their accident and emergency units.
Middle grade doctors are the backbone of the NHS, falling between junior doctors and consultants. But changes under the last government to the immigration rules and to the way doctors are now trained, as well as the fact that becoming a GP is now more attractive because they do not have to work anti social hours, mean there are not enough A&E middle grades to go around.
Thirty-four of the 99 trusts who responded to our FOI said there had been more than one occasion in the past year when they had not been able to have a middle grade doctor on call, on-site, overnight. This has meant consultant doctors having to work longer hours or juniors being left unsupervised, or the hiring in of expensive locums.
£10m bill for locums
Our FOI also reveals that the 34 trusts have spent nearly £10 million in the past year on locums.
At Rotherham hospital, there have been 14 occasions in the past year when they have not had a middle grade doctor for overnight duty.
Dr Simon McCormick, a consultant in emergency medicine, said they had not had to close their A&E but there were times when patients had to wait longer.
“We call in a lot of favours and this often means our staff having to work far too many hours,” he said.
Dr Don McKechnie, vice-president of the College of Emergency Medicine, said that when the immigration laws changed it made it much more difficult to recruit from outside Europe. This meant that Indian, Pakistani doctors and those from Sri Lanka, Hong Kong and Singapore, suddenly found it much more difficult to work here.
Our FOI shows that out of the 34 trusts, half said they are advertising continually to try and recruit for vacant posts while 20 out of 34 trying to recruit from abroad.
Modernising Medical Careers (MMC), also brought in under the last government, meant junior doctors were pushed earlier into making a decision about which specialty they wanted to train in and there was a fall off in those choosing emergency medicine.
“Why do this when you can go and be a GP, earn lots more money and not have to work anti-social hours,” one doctor said.
The Department of Health said in a statement: “NHS employers are allowed to employ foreign doctors if there are no suitable UK or EEA doctors.
“The number of doctors choosing to specialise in A&E is rising. We are working closely with the UK Border Agency on their visa procedures that affect NHS staff recruited from overseas.”