Staff crisis at cottage hospitals

Keswick's minor injury unit is reducing its hours from 8am to 8pm to 8.30am to 7pm daily.

This, Cumbria Partnership NHS Foundation Trust says, will allow nursing staff to maintain its 12 beds and continue to operate the minor injuries unit.

The trust is also closely monitoring and reviewing options for other "fragile hospitals" including Maryport and Cockermouth in West Cumbria.

Alston cottage hospital's six beds and in-patient staff are being "consolidated" at

There are hopes it will reopen in September once more nurses are recruited.

The trust insists the contingency plans are a temporary measure and that it is doing everything it can to avoid having to make further changes.

It added that the changes will improve the sustainability and stability of the remaining units for now.

Dr Sara Munro, the trust's director of nursing and quality, said: "It is well known that we have been operating our inpatient units with significant staff shortages for some time.

"However, we are now experiencing unprecedented shortages in qualified nursing staff of 40 per cent on five of our units and rising to 59 per cent at Alston.

"We have more vacancies than we usually have at the moment which is being compounded by annual leave and sickness at a small number of sites.

"Due to the small nature of our units, the staff shortages are amplified when there are only one or two nurses on duty as there is no backup available to them should we experience increased sickness."

She added: "The quality and safety of services for patients is our overriding priority and clearly these staffing levels are insufficient to continue to operate all units safely from next week.

"We recognise the significant disruption this will have for patients at Alston and we know that the community will feel let down but we want to provide reassurance that we have done everything we can to keep the unit open."

Patients at Alston are being reviewed and a care package put in place around each person according to their needs.

Patients will either be transferred to a different unit, or discharged home or to a residential care home where appropriate.

The trust has taken steps to improve the situation including additional recruitment, mobilising staff from other services to cover absence, utilising bank staff, and seeking help from other bodies.

Several vacancies have recently been filled on the trust's inpatient units, including five nurses and a number of leadership positions.

Other organisations have also been approached to provide some staff to temporarily fill vacancies.

While this has provided some relief, it has not been sufficient to cover safe staffing levels.

Trust chief executive Claire Molloy said staff had gone "above and beyond their roles" to ensure services could continue safely.

She said: "We are incredibly grateful for their dedication and continued hard work, however this is not sustainable and we are beginning to see the signs of stress in our staff due to the additional demands being placed on them.

"The contingency plans offer a temporary solution to immediate challenges and we are absolutely clear that this does not pre-empt any decision that needs to be made about the long term future of these services.

"At Alston we have nursing staff taking up posts with us at the end of August and so it is our ambition to re-open the unit there in September.

"However, this will depend on any additional staffing issues that may crop up before then and so we do need to keep this under review."

Beds will reopen as soon as safe staffing levels are guaranteed, she added.

The Success Regime is currently looking at all of the issues facing the hospitals as part of its controversial review.

It was revealed this week that the Success Regime’s preferred long-term option is to remove all of the beds from Wigton, Alston and Maryport – and four from Penrith.

A total of 104 beds – about 30 less than currently available – would then be consolidated.

The Success Regime insists no decisions have been made.