Blow for heart patients as surgery theatre shut

HEART patients are facing longer waits for surgery due to cancellations and staff shortages at Scotland’s main cardiac centre, which have led to an operating theatre being stood down.

The Golden Jubilee Hospital in Clydebank, which is the largest of its kind in the UK, is running at 75 per cent capacity with three out of four theatres currently in use.

June Rogers, operations director for NHS Golden Jubilee, said there were currently 183 patients waiting for cardiac surgery, up from 153 in September, and said theatre capacity was reviewed on a weekly basis.

The staffing shortfall has been attributed to a combination of long and short-term sickness absence, due in part to Covid, as well as maternity leave and vacant posts in a “challenging” area for recruitment.

Providing an update to board members, she said 15 per cent of operations were cancelled in September, although this was a decrease on the previous month and the figure has dropped to 6%.

The cancellations were in part due to the hospital carrying out a record number of heart transplants, with 21 performed in the past year.

“This is fantastic and obviously fantastic for the patients but we must also acknowledge that this has a disruptive impact on the service,” said Ms Rogers.

“The team continue to interrogate the reasons for the cancellations with a view to improvement.

“Due to staffing challenges we are currently unable to run all four of our cardiac theatres as we did pre-covid.

“The reason for standing down one of the theatres is reviewed on a week-to-week basis. The situation has slightly improved. We are starting to see some recruitment coming to fruition and hopefully some of the staff on shortterm sickness coming back. It’s a challenging service to recruit to.”

Of the 183 patients on the waiting list for heart surgery, she said 131 were available.

The hospital has been taking cardiac referrals from NHS Grampian but this was interrupted due to capacity issues.

“We are in regular contact if they have urgent patients who should go ahead anything on our list, we try to accommodate that,” said Ms Rogers.

“We do try to meet that nine-week target, albeit the national standard is 12,” she added.

The board said staff absence rates were at their highest level since 2016 with mental health challenges identified as a recurrent theme but it said a similar picture was being seen across Scotland.

Ms Rogers said urgent patients from other health board areas remain at the hospital to recover, rather than being sent back to local hospitals “where there are no beds to be had”.

A health board spokeswoman said: “Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, we continued urgent heart and lung care including heart transplants.

“In addition, we provided support to NHS Scotland through additional capacity for cancer services.

“NHS Golden Jubilee’s elective (planned) cardiac waiting list is slightly increased as a result of the need to prioritise urgent and emergency heart procedures.

“We are continuing to review our theatre capacity daily to ensure we can provide a safe, effective service so that we can treat as many patients as possible.

“In some specialties, this includes weekend working and extended days. Recruitment in healthcare is causing challenge worldwide, especially in certain specialties.

“To meet this challenge, NHS Golden Jubilee is actively recruiting to new and vacant posts. However, like many organisations in healthcare, we are dealing with planned and unplanned short and long-term absences.”

It’s a challenging service to recruit to