Crisis health board 1,000 staff short

THE health board at the centre of Scotland’s NHS crisis faced a staffing disaster of more than 1,000 vacancies at the end of last year.

The personnel black hole is so great that NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde relies on 800 temporary ‘bank’ nurses every day.

And the situation reached a peak this week when Scotland’s largest health board was forced to cancel 87 operations and open a makeshift ward in a portable cabin normally used for storage.

Following an emergency meeting with bosses, a senior officer at the Royal College of Nursing said she was ‘concerned for patients’ safety’.

Managers at the board are now meeting three times a day as patients have been left waiting up to 24 hours for a bed. The board has denied understaffing is to blame for the crisis, which has hit hospitals across the country.

Some of the 1,003 vacancies were for non-medical jobs.

But Nicola Sturgeon came under fire yesterday at First Minister’s Questions, as it emerged the Scottish Government had tried to stop boards speaking to the Press about the A&E workloads.

Labour deputy leader Kezia Dugdale said: ‘The people who work in our NHS do great work every single day. Instead of trying to silence NHS staff, Nicola Sturgeon needs to sort things out.’

Yesterday more operations were cancelled across the country. At Victoria Infirmary in Glasgow, patients were moved into a 16-year-old portable cabin.

Anne Thomson, senior officer at the Royal College of Nursing, said: ‘It is all very well opening more beds, but a bed is just a piece of furniture and you have got to have the nurses to man the beds.

‘For a long time nurse staffing levels have been far too low. We are concerned for patients’ safety.’

A spokesman for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde defended its handling of the crisis and said: ‘We have record numbers of doctors and nurses working across our hospitals today, staffing a record number of beds.

‘We do not accept that the current pressures are the result of staffing vacancies.’