SOUTHEND Hospital’s bed crisis is still at a critical level bosses have confirmed.

The hospital went into critical incident mode, the highest alert, on Friday afternoon but managers hoped to come out of it on Monday.

Hospital officials admitted yesterday they not been able to reduce the alert level.

The incident came shortly after the hospital was inspected by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) last week.

The CQC praised hospital staff for the care they provide, but raised concerns about the number of nursing staff.

The hospital yesterday confirmed that they have 119 nursing vacancies and were looking at closing a number of beds. It is thought as many as 70 beds could be taken out of action to preserve patient safety following CQC concerns.

The hospital opted out of the national Agenda for Change payscale in 2006, setting its own pay and conditions. Unions have blamed the hospital’s inability to attract nurses on this issue but the hospital denies this and says a lack of London pay weighting is to blame.

The hospital claims its local terms, which are in line with the Agenda for Change pay scale, allows enhanced arrangements around annual leave, long service recognition and urgent domestic leave, as well as a higher starting rate for newly qualified staff and overseas nurses.

Echo:

Mary Foulkes, hospital director

Mary Foulkes, the hospital’s director of organisation and human resources, said: “Local terms also means we have the flexibility to award pay premiums to those areas that are recognised as hard to recruit nationally, which has enabled us to successfully recruit to our A&E and paediatric departments.

“The biggest issue we face in Southend is that we are not within the nationally determined high cost area supplement for London fringe, which is centrally funded and provides a five per cent addition to the basic salary.”

The world’s largest nurses’ union did not agree though.

Chris Hill, senior regional officer for the Royal College of Nursing, admitted all NHS trusts in Essex are finding it difficult to recruit nurses at the minute, but that Southend was the worst.

He said: “Most of the hospital trusts in Essex have gone to Europe, and even wider than Europe, to recruit nurses to work in our hospitals.

“There’s a limit to the amount of nurses that will be available abroad though and they are all fishing in the same pond.

“Southend moved away from Agenda for Change in 2006 but other trusts in Essex are still on it and we have been trying to address this at Southend’s staff forum, with all the trade unions.

“What we are seeing, particularly at Southend, is that nurses do not want to work there.”

"THERE IS NO QUICK FIX"

THE staffing issues come at a time when junior doctors are undergoing industrial action in a dispute over weekend working.

All doctors below consultant are considered junior and 64 of them went on strike for 24 hours in Southend last week, during the first day of the Care Quality Commission’s inspection at the hospital.

Talks between the British Medical Association (BMA) and the Government have so far been unsuccessful, meaning junior doctors are scheduled to walk out again, this time for 48 hours, from Tuesday, January 26.

Fifty operations were cancelled at Southend Hospital due to last week’s strike and more will surely follow if the planned action goes ahead next week.

One junior doctor, Sheneen Meghji, 31, a BMA representative and trainee surgeon at Southend Hospital, said the hospital would still be suffering even without the strike.

She said: “Unfortunately there is no quick fix. The fix would be to have more beds and more nurses, but that’s not possible at the minute.

“It is really important that the general public realises that it is not just the strike. The hospital was in black alert before the strikes.”

BEDS WILL BE CLOSED

THE hospital is undergoing a review of the number of beds it can staff with its shortage of nurses.

Working with Clinical Commissioning Groups from outside Southend to bring in extra resources it had opened up around 30 extra beds during the black alert and critical incident periods in recent weeks.

However these, and a number of other beds in various wards, will be closing.

Concerns were raised by the Care Quality Commission after last week’s inspection about the ratio of nurses to patients and the Echo understood that two wards, totalling between 60 and 70 beds, were to be closed but the hospital denies this.

A spokeswoman for the hospital said: “The hospital will be reviewing the number of beds it has, including the extra capacity that has been opened to help deal with the increased pressure we have faced in the past few weeks and we will continue to work together with our partners to ensure we are able to concentrate on the patients with higher levels of acuity and improve the staffing ratios.

“We will not be closing two wards, rather individual beds across a number of wards. This will be in a planned way to minimise the risk to patients as best we can.

“These are short term measures and as recruitment schemes continue to come online and we are able to strengthen teams, we expect this situation to change.”