Full maternity services are restored at Elgin hospital
MATERNITY services are to be fully restored at Dr Gray’s Hospital, Elgin, say NHS bosses.
They came under fire over a proposed downgrading of the child care and women’s departments last summer.
Staff shortages led to new plans being put in place to transfer mothers-to-be with medium and high-risk pregnancies to hospitals in Inverness and Aberdeen.
However, fewer pregnant women were moved to other medical facilities after two new consultants were appointed last year.
Now NHS Grampian says it is confident that full services can be restored by the end of this year after bringing in a restructuring programme which will reduce its reliance on junior doctors.
Eight advanced nurse practitioners and three physician associates are currently being trained up to take on new roles at the hospital.
And following the new changes brought in place for the roles of junior doctors, four qualified candidates have shown interest which, if they are appointed, will fill half of the vacant roles.
Changes were introduced to reduce their share of on-call duties and to allow them to spend more of their time on clinical work.
Yesterday chief officer of health and social care Moray, Pam Gowans, said the future looked much brighter for the Elgin hospital.
She said: “We are very optimistic about restoring the services as the basis of the work we have undertaken so far means that it is looking positive.
“By the end of 2019 we will have recruited all the right staff and we can try to get back to the fullest service we can offer.
“The trained nurse practitioners, along with the prescribing pharmacists will help us fill the gap between senior medical staff and junior doctors and the blended workforce will make us more stable.
“Over the next 10 weeks we will be trying to define the model of care we are looking for and try and get some sort of published plan in August.”
However, maternity campaign group Keep Mum questioned why it had taken the health board so long to work out plans for services to be fully restored. A spokeswoman said: “Jeane Freeman [ Scottish Government Health Secretary] ordered NHSG to return the unit to a consultant led service on 2nd August 2018 and at the moment the planning to do that has only just started. We need much more of a sense of urgency. Why has it taken so long?”
Moray MSP Richard Lochhead said he was reassured that that the health board was taking all appropriate measures to restore safe services at the hospital.