Targets pushed A&E doctors to speed-consult and were unsafe. To see more patients we need more staff on the shop floor.

The government is right to scrap waiting-time targets in the NHS, but we need more staff on the shop floor.

Read more....  

Doctors working in accident and emergency say plans to downgrade some services are based on flawed evidence.

The College of Emergency medicine says it's wrong to assume that most patients coming to A&E can be seen elsewhere.

They say investment in separate walk-in and urgent care centres is misguided and wasteful.

Read full article..

Staff survey gives trust 'vote of no confidence'

ONCE AGAIN, the standard of patient care at the Royal Blackburn Hospital is under question.

 NHS STAFF working at the Royal Blackburn Hospital have finally been allowed to voice their opinion 'anonomously' about patient safety and working conditions.

Less than half of staff working at the Hospital trust in Blackburn said they would be happy to have a friend or relative treated at the hospital where they worked, amounting to a massive vote of no confidence.

Since the transfer of A&E services from Burnley to Blackburn in 2007, many staff have commented that they are under enourmous pressure to cope with the additional workload. Prior to the survey, some staff have said they simply cannot provide the quality of care they would like due to over-capacity and understaffing at the Royal Blackburn site. This was again highlighted in the staff survey.

The survey consisted of 155 questions about the perceptions staff had of their workplace.

STAFF SURVEY - THE RESULTS

Below are results from the 2009/2010 staff survey..

• only 48% of staff would be happy to have a friend or relative treated at their hospital
  
  

• when staff made complaints, not enough was done in response to the complaints
  
  

• a third of staff were dissatisfied with patient care provided at their hospital and felt that their work was undervalued
  
  

•  Many staff say they feel excluded from decision-making processes and that senior managers do not act on their feedback
  
  

• two-thirds said there was not enough staff for them to be able to do their job properly
  
  
• Only just over half of staff said they would recommend the trust as a place to work.

Liberal Democrat, and Burnley Council leader Gordon Birtwistle said: “This survey is terrible from the hospitals’ point of view as it is a shocking thing that less than half of the staff would want their own relatives or friends treated at the hospitals.

“What does that say about the standards of care?

“It shows that the hospital is overwhelmed and they cannot cope with the level of patients.”

The report highlighted that staff recommendation of the trust as a place to work or receive treatment was in the lowest 20 per cent in the country.

It also showed that staff intending to leave their job was above average compared to other trusts.

The survey is now to be forwarded to the Care Quality Commission (formerly the Healthcare Commission)

Read the Lancashire Telegraph report here...

Note to Editors:

In 2007 the Department of Health, in conjunction with Ipsos MORI, conducted a piece of research, referred to as ‘What Matters to Staff in the NHS' , which tried to identify the major factors contributing to staff engagement and motivation to provide high quality patient care. These themes informed the Next Stage Review and the staff pledges in the NHS Constitution , which have brought a renewed focus on the NHS as an employer. The latter includes four pledges to staff that set out, for the first time, what the NHS expects from its staff and what staff can expect from the NHS as an employer

Former Burnley nurse slams 'dreadful' Blackburn hospital

Saturday 3rd April 2010

A FORMER nurse has branded the standard of care she received at the Royal Blackburn Hospital ‘dreadful’.

Joan Dawson, 80, worked on wards at Burnley General Hospital for more than 50 years.

But the pensioner said she was shocked by modern day standards when she was admitted to Blackburn.

She claims nurses failed to clean her ward of another patient's diarrhoea and vomit, and that the environment affected her recovery from a minor heart attack. Mrs Dawson said she had to ask nurses to be bathed and had to use pillows passed on from other patients because no clean pillow cases were available. Read full article here from the Lancashire Telegraph..

It's OUR NHS says..

Acute emergency services were moved from Burnley to the Blackburn Hospital in November 2007 with Burnley people being told they would receive the 'highest standards of care' at the new Blackburn super-hospital.

In June last year, Dr Foster , the UK's leading provider of comparative information on health care, gave the East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust - who run Blackburn Hospital - a score of 27.4 out of 100 for 'patient safety' . The trust were also slammed for cancelling over 37 operations due to lost patient notes and further criticised for having high re-admission rates in children's paediatrics.

In a fiendish twist of fate, the same Hospital Trust recently announced they were continuing their plans to close Burnley General Hospitals' children's paediatric in-patient ward and move it to the controversial Blackburn site.

The people of Burnley, Pendle and Rossendale will never accept that transferring their only children's ward in Burnley over to Blackburn will meet both the needs of the children or their parents/guardians.

East Lancashire hospital Trust promised us that our citizens would receive high-quality patient care in Blackburn when they closed our A&E department in Burnley. Sadly, these were empty promises and almost every week we hear stories of poor patient care, cancelled operations, ambulances queuing, shortage of staff.... the list goes on.

The Hospital Trust have had well over two years to get their act together and sort out the problems at Blackburn hospital but they are still failing miserably.

WE DEMAND HIGH QUALITY PATIENT CARE!

We believe the only way this can be achieved is for East Lancashire to have 'two' Accident & Emergency departments along with childrens' in-patient paediatric services. Both the Blackburn hospital site and Burnley site need to work co-operatively to achieve these objectives to provide quality clinical care and achieve financial balance.

You only have to look at some of the pages on this website to see the chaos that ensued after the A&E at Burnley was closed and moved to Blackburn.

Are we expected to sit back and allow the same thing to happen with our children's ward? NEVER! 

The population of East Lancashire is far too great to be served by one A&E department in Blackburn.
It is far too great to expect outstanding care for our children when evidence has shown the Blackburn hospital is incapable of running efficient A&E services.

Patients' lives are placed at risk time and time again yet we, as stakeholders in our National Health Service, are told that these services are meeting our healthcare needs, when clearly they are not.

It's time to stand up and demand return of A&E services at Burnley to bring calm to what can only be described as a health service constantly in a state of panic.

We expect nothing less than this. We're not aiming for perfection, or world class healthcare, only a healthcare system in East Lancashire  that is stable and provides quality care for all.

Why two A&E's are needed in East Lancashire

Prior to the closure of Burnley's A&E department the East Lancashire Hospital NHS Trust knew they were taking a huge risk when A&E services were transferred from Burnley to Blackburn.

So why was this integration of one A&E (Burnley) into another (Blackburn)  such a worry for hospital bosses?

The answer is geographical location and population count. In other words, the Royal Blackburn Hospital wasn't central to the largest distribution of East Lancashire residents and more importantly, it was 'unknown' whether a single A&E would cope with such large numbers of intakes. As we now know, it couldn't.

East Lancashire has a population of over 526,000 residents (2008 census) and is now likely over 600,000 upwards.

The Royal College of Surgeons clearly stated that any population over 400,000 would require TWO hospitals both with A&E facilities (departments). Anything less may result in severe over-capacity and other related problems.

Did the East Lancashire Hospitals Trust consider this before closing Burnley's A&E?
Clearly not,  and although ambulances queued outside the only A&E in East Lancashire they insisted they would continue to provide high-quality services to the people of East Lancashire.

Other Hospital Trusts are consistently meeting their targets and at the same time providing quality healthcare.

Here's a list of those other Hospital Trusts, the population they serve and the number of A&E's.:

Chorley - Preston, distance 9 miles - population 425,000. Number of  A&E's = 2

Halifax - Huddersfield,  distance 6 miles, population 375,000. Number of A&E's = 2

Bolton - Bury, distance 10 miles, population 470,000. Number of A&E's = 2

Blackburn - Burnley, distance 14 miles, population 600,000+ . Number of A&E's = 1

Whilst other neighbouring  trusts meet NHS targets and provide quality hospital health care, we in Burnley & Pendle have to endure cancelled operations or wait our turn in the back of an ambulance queued outside the Blackburn Hospital.

Why should the residents of Burnley & Pendle and surrounding areas be stuck with only '1' A&E when it's evident that '2' A&E's would share the workload much better, and more importantly, provide a much safer hospital service.

Related links:

Peter Pike and Ian Woolley's full Document for the A&E Independent Review

Two A&E's for population smaller than East Lancs

HAND'S OFF OUR HOSPITAL!

Not content with removing the A&E from Burnley General Hospital, Health managers have confirmed they now want to shut down the only Children's ward in Burnley.

All paediatric (childrens) in-patient beds from the Deerplay Ward, which has cared for generations of children from Burnley and Pendle, and which was refurbished only last July, are destined to be moved to the Royal Blackburn Hospital by the end of the year.

East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust have confirmed only a children's minor illness 'observation & assessment unit' (OAU) will be based at Burnley.

The closure means that anybody who has a child in Burnley or Pendle who has to be admitted to hospital for in-patient treatment will have to travel 15 miles to Blackburn to a hospital that's already overwhelmed.

WHAT YOU CAN DO - PROTEST MARCH

A protest march against the cuts to Burnley General Hospital has been organised, here's the details::

When: next Saturday 27th March at 1pm

Where: Queens Park, Burnley (near the fire station)

Assemble at the bottom of Queens Park before 1pm.
The Rally will then proceed to the bandstand in Burnley centre (outside McDonalds).