Under-pressure hospital ‘asked secretaries to wash patients’
AN under-pressure hospital has sparked anger after office staff were allegedly called on to carry out tasks on the ward including washing patients.
Thirty secretaries, receptionists and admin assistants took up jobs in a Grimsby hospital earlier this week to support struggling nurses.
But the Trust that runs the Diana Princess of Wales Hospital has been criticised for the ‘dangerous’ policy, which critics say could have put patients at risk.
In a further sign of the NHs staffing crisis, two members of administrative staff were allocated per ward, including A&E, and 30 volunteered in total. The Trust says staff only performed non-clinical jobs.
In one image posted by a Trust director on Wednesday, two members of office staff can be seen with their sleeves rolled up and wearing blue latex gloves. One is carrying a yellow bin bag for clinical waste, used to hold items exposed to patients, such as syringes and sick bowls. In another, two female staff are seen standing outside a ward wearing watches, with their sleeves and hair down – which would not be allowed on the ward for infection control reasons.
The hospital had to draft in the untrained help after being hit by a combination of staff sickness and ward closures. Hospital bosses said the Trust went through a two- day period of ‘intense pressures’ on Tuesday and Wednesday – but nurses and MPs said it was a desperate response to the difficulties facing the NHs.
One nurse at the hospital claimed: ‘The situation is dangerous and needs addressing – it’s not just putting patients at risk but also putting the careers of these office workers on the line … The non-nursing teams also performed bed baths and washed patients. This, in my opinion, should only be done by trained nurses.
‘Why should admin staff have to cover a professional who has worked at least five years learning skills to become a nurse? What would have happened if they had given the wrong medication to someone?
‘Dangerous situation’
This is what we get when roles are cut and nurses have to take days off sick to recover from exhausting and demanding shift patterns.’
They added: ‘ It’s not good enough is it … Mr [Jeremy] Hunt over to you.’ Melanie Onn, MP for Great Grimsby, added: ‘The latest news, if accurate, demonstrates how stretched our local NHs is.
‘I will raise this with the Health Minister at the earliest opportunity as it does not seem that the Government recognise the scale of the difficulties.’
Melanie Graves, an assistant director at the North Lincolnshire and Goole NHs Trust, which runs the Diana Princess of Wales Hospital, posted the images showing staff helping on wards and wrote: ‘It is the second day of intense pressures and another huge thanks to all our amazing staff who came to offer help … especially our admin teams who volunteered themselves again to help out with non-clinical roles.’
The Trust denied that volunteering members of staff washed patients. They insisted they ‘were not involved directly in patient care’ and had been trained in infection control. Jayne Adamson, acting chief executive at the Trust, said: ‘Grimsby hospital has been operating under extreme pressure for the past week.
‘A number of administrative staff from our corporate services very kindly responded to a request for volunteers to help ease the pressure on our clinical staff … They are performing non-clinical tasks only.’
In January, office staff at two hospitals in the Hull and East Yorkshire NHs Trust were asked to help out on wards after record numbers of patients were admitted. Workers at Hull Royal Infirmary and Castle Hill Hospital helped with taking prescriptions to pharmacies and spending time with patients.