Emergency care cut in service shake-up at Stafford's County Hospital

A new staff model affecting the hospital's A&E department and children's minor injuries unit will see emergency medical consultants only available between 8am and 5pm from Monday to Friday.

Previously they were available until midnight.

Children with injuries are also set to be treated by the A&E team instead of the paediatric nurse team, while advice to not bring children with illnesses to the hospital has been reiterated.

The changes, which will be implemented immediately, have been labelled as temporary but no date has been given for a return to normal procedure, with the possibility that they could become permanent not ruled out.

The University Hospitals North Midlands Trust which runs the hospital will review the success of the changes on a weekly basis.

Dr John Oxtoby, medical director with the University Hospitals North Midlands Trust, said: “It’s important to emphasise that the high standard of care provided at County Hospital to both adults and children will continue.

"Patients attending the two services should not notice any difference in standard of care received when attending the department and should not do anything differently than they normally would.

"However, depending on the individual needs of each patient, it may be a different type of clinician that provides the care.

"Safety is our absolute priority and this will ensure that our emergency services are responsive to the needs of patients and ensure the right staff are in the place where patients need them the most.”

The trust provides emergency services for a population of 900,000 locally and three million regionally.

Over the past few months there has been a slow build up in demand for services at Royal Stoke and this increase now means more staff are required at that hospital.

As part of the changes, paediatric nurses who have been providing the Children’s Minor Injuries Unit service at County Hospital are being relocated to Royal Stoke.

Dr Melissa Hubbard, clinical chair for children’s, women’s and diagnostics, said: “We provide one Children’s Service across our hospitals and it is important that we use our clinicians flexibly when demand for the services changes.

"We have recently seen an increase in demand for the service at Royal Stoke University Hospital and have therefore taken the decision to locate our paediatric nurses at one site.

"We have a highly skilled emergency department team at County Hospital who will be able to see and treat any children attending with minor injuries.

"This is a temporary move that will see children from across the North Midlands benefit from improved access to care.”

Dr Ann Marie Morris, clinical director of emergency medicine, said: “My team are trained in the care of children with minor injuries so any child attending will receive a high standard of care.

"The temporary change to consultant presence at County Hospital is recognition that at times we have emergency medicine consultants at County Hospital late at night before the unit closes when they would be better placed reviewing patients arriving at Royal Stoke.

"This means that patients from Stafford who have suffered stroke, a heart attack or major trauma, who will automatically be taken to a large acute centre, will have greater access to emergency medicine consultants.”