Letter: It's time for health bosses to come clean with the public
In November 2016 I wrote to you providing comparative national data which showed A&E services at Shrewsbury and Telford were hugely under-doctored in terms of consultant numbers.
This would have been the case had the A&E services been consolidated on one site only: let alone two.
My letter was based on there being six consultants. A recent article, 'No consultants at weekends' states that there are now only four consultants to cover both departments.
The situation is totally untenable and how long will it be before other consultants 'vote with their feet' and move to where they can provide a proper service, covering their junior staff (which is essential for safe care) and where they are not overworked and stressed out?
The effects on the junior medical, nursing and other staff must be very demoralising. It is not possible to provide a safe service for the public in these circumstances.
And yet people are still demanding a two-A&E solution on service reconfiguration. They are living in cloud cuckoo land.
Only if SATH are able to treble their current four consultants will they approach the numbers necessary to run a single, on one site, department as recommended by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine for a department seeing the current number of patients.
It is long past the time that the CCGs, managers of the hospital services, and others, including politicians, came clean with the public: They know these truths very well.
Eric Waters, retired A&E consultant and NHS Trust medical director
Bishop's Castle
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