Office staff ‘happy’ to clean hospital beds
A HEALTH board which has been forced to draft in office workers to clean hospital beds and serve meals has responded to criticism saying staff were “delighted” to help out the under-pressure NHS.
Admin staff in NHS Lanarkshire have been redeployed to the area’s hospitals to help ease pressure on staff coping with “unprecedented” levels of winter illness.
Labour branded the move “utterly ridiculous” saying it smacked off under-resourcing and under-staffing of the health service by the SNP government.
However, the health board issued a press release yesterday, offering a more positive spin, saying the move had been enthusiastically received by staff.
In the release, NHS Lanarkshire describes how board secretary Paul Cannon, “swapped his suit for a plastic apron to scrub beds and hand out patient meals,” at Hairmyres Hospital in East Kilbride.
He said: “At the hospital I was helping out in an area of the busy acute assessment unit. The staff trained me to do some ‘bed busting’ – that’s a thorough clean of beds, mattresses and areas around beds after patients leave the unit to ensure beds are ready for the next patient as soon as possible.”
He goes on to say he was also tasked with answering phones to tell patients that their appointments have been postponed.
Other staff have been packing and shifting boxes to help create more space for additional beds.
New figures show flu cases have more than doubled in Scotland compared to the same time last year. Around half of all NHS boards have reported significant ward pressures with some hospitals cancelling non-urgent procedures.
Health Secretary Shona Robison said NHS staff across the country were doing a, “fantastic job in difficult circumstances”.
Scottish Labour health spokesperson, Anas Sarwar, said: “While the dedication of the office staff of NHS Lanarkshire is to be applauded, it is utterly ridiculous that they are being asked to clean hospitals and feed patients.
“We have a health service which is blatantly underresourced and under-pressure.
“Winter is always an acute time of year in terms of demand, but our hospitals are forced into employing office staff on the front line because of the failures of the Scottish Government.”