Hospitals turn away youngsters as wards shut in staffing crisis

CHILDREN’S wards and baby units across Scotland have been forced to close because of a shortage of doctors and nurses.

A damning report has revealed a quarter of children’s inpatient wards and more than 40 per cent of neonatal intensive care units have refused new patients because of staffing problems.

Premature babies, sick children and their families have been forced to travel to other hospitals – in some cases enduring long and stressful journeys.

One neonatal unit was shut to new babies 39 times in a year because of the crisis.

The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH), which published the report, warned there are ‘significant strains’ on NHS children’s services.

It has called for more places for paediatric trainees and wants 84 to 110 more consultants over the next few years.

Its report said that the temporary closures to new admissions in the 12 months to October 2015 were ‘due to concerns over staffing’.

More than 130,000 children are admitted to Scottish hospital inpatient wards a year, including more than 70,000 emergencies.

Neonatal intensive care units provide specialist care for the smallest, sickest babies – around one in ten of all babies born in Scotland each year.

The earliest-born infants could be as little as 23 or 24 weeks of gestation and weighing just one or two pounds.

RCPCH officer for Scotland Professor Steve Turner said: ‘Service leads across Scotland identify recruitment as the main workforce pressure facing their units.

‘Time and again we see rota gaps in paediatric services causing significant strain on the system and these figures show staffing shortages are leading to service closures all too often. This can only be resolved by increasing the numbers coming into paediatrics.’

Three of the 12 inpatient wards and five of the 13 neonatal units responding to the survey said they had ‘had to close to new admissions due to shortages of nurses and/or doctors’. The survey did not identify any hospitals forced to make closures, to retain units’ confidentiality.

Although current first-year trainee positions are fully subscribed, there are gaps in more senior rotas because of a ‘failure’ to take into account the number of doctors who go part-time.

The findings echo those in a report by the premature and sick baby charity Bliss Scotland, which was released in January.

It found that two-thirds of neonatal units in Scotland do not have enough medical staff to meet standards, and also that threequarters of units have a shortage of neonatal nurses.

Yesterday Caroline Lee-Davey, chief executive at Bliss Scotland, said: ‘This RCPCH report illustrates the desperate need for more medical staff at neonatal units across the country.’

Scottish Tory health spokesman Miles Briggs said: ‘There are staff shortages right across the NHS, and it’s up to the SNP Government to sort that out.’

Scottish Labour’s health spokesman Anas Sarwar said: ‘This is the reality of the SNP’s chronic underinvestment in our NHS staff – patients turned away because hospital units simply don’t have the levels of staff required.’

A Scottish Government spokesman said: ‘Over the past decade this Government has helped deliver record numbers of doctors, nurses and other staff across the NHS in Scotland. We work closely with boards to support their efforts in staff recruitment.’

‘Significant strain on the system’