Hospital frontline is a 'war zone'

Richard Evans, local democracy reporter

“Harassed” frontline NHS staff in north Wales are working in a “virtual war zone” led by a board with not enough “medical expertise”.

That is the claim made by a retired consultant heading a Facebook campaign for more community hospital beds.

Jonathan Osborne FRCS, a former ear, nose, and throat surgeon at Ysbyty Glan Clwyd, fears the Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board (BCUHB) doesn’t have the experience to turn the situation around.

Mr Osborne, who recently criticised A&E waiting times in Bangor, Bodelwyddan and Wrexham, said: “Betsi’s board now has no one with any experience of general practice, nor anyone with public health expertise and only one hospital doctor with significant other responsibilities, not least the new medical school in Bangor.”

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'Dire circumstances'

He added: “This just isn’t enough to provide a health board in such dire circumstances the clinical expertise it so desperately needs. The management team appears to be totally divorced from what is happening in the engine room. A good example of this was the recent withdrawal of proper meals for patients waiting for days in the A&E department at Glan Clwyd Hospital.”

He continued: “It seems as though no one from the ship’s bridge ever visits the engine room, where the teams keeping the engine running are short staffed, working in bad conditions, and having to deal with management edicts that do not make sense to them. There is a whole tier of middle management who seem to have meetings without outcomes, living in remote offices separated from the reality of life below deck.”

He added: “Everyone knows that the harassed staff work in a virtual war zone. They are dealing with frightened, rightfully angry patients and their relatives. They are unable to care for patients safely, or to give them any dignity, particularly when staffing numbers cannot be relied on, with short staffing or dependence on the availability of expensive agency staff.”

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Car parking

Mr Osborne went on to complain of a lack of hospital car parking facilities preventing staff from getting to work efficiently.

Accommodation for resident staff at Glan Clwyd has not been upgraded since the place was built in the 1970s, and was now substandard, he added.

Mr Osborne: “These are all problems that would be easy to fix, and which would reduce Betsi’s ballooning agency bill of around £55m each year, which has almost doubled since 2021. Agency staff with limited knowledge of the hospital cost twice as much to employ as staff that are directly employed.”

He added: “When it comes to recruiting medical staff, whole departments are now manned by temporary (locum) doctors. These doctors cannot be expected either to provide leadership nor departmental improvement. Talented people are put off applying for a position where there appears to be little understanding or support for consultants who want to develop their service. “

Engage

Dyfed Edwards, chair of Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, said: “Both our chief executive and I have met with the campaign group and discussed their concerns in detail. We value the opportunity to engage constructively and to listen to the views of others.”

A spokeswoman for the trust added that it was “incorrect to say the board doesn’t have the appropriate experience in the areas he has stated”. She added: “You can see who our board members are and their background on our website.”

You can visit the community beds Facebook group here.