UKC

We have been sent this personal account by Tim Catterall of why downgrading both Fort William and Oban Hospitals to GP-lead community hospitals will be bad news for climbers, walkers and the local communities.

_______

In February I had a serious accident while on a climbing holiday in the Fort William area. After climbing a winter route I attempted to Paraglide back down to the car, only things didn‚t go quite to plan and to cut a long story short I got airlifted to the Belford Hospital in Fort William with suspected head and spinal injuries. I was on a high dependency unit for two days before being transferred to Glasgow Specialist Spines Unit. The care I received was excellent and saved my life.

While I was recovering in hospital I heard about a proposed closer/downgrading of Fort William A&E. As you can probably imagine I feel very strongly about this as Fort William A&E (the Belford Hospital) recently saved my life.

Basically NHS Highland have proposed to downgrade both Fort William and Oban Hospitals to GP lead community hospitals with no out of hours or weekend accident and emergency cover or alternatively to make one a 24 accident and emergency hospital and the other a 'sub acute' (what ever that means). In other words if you had a heart attack or an accident in the evening or at the weekend you would require to be transported direct from the scene to Inverness or Glasgow or Oban with no 'stabilisation' facility in between. If your emergency is not close to Fort William this will add a significant time risk to any journey and treatment. People will die if this happens, both climbers and locals - don't let this happen.

Please sign the petition on action group - http://www.tbag.org.uk/
Your action could stop it happening.

Tim Catterall

_______

If you have signed the petition then reply to this thread to keep it alive.

UKC News

In reply to UKC News: That's a fair point, but surely if you are airlifted, it doesn't really make any difference whether you fly to Fort William, Inverness or Glasgow in terms of time. In Yorkshire for example, the RAF rescue helecopter is based in Hull but serves the Pennines which are miles away, but it still arrives within minutes. If you are not deemed critical enough to be airlifted it is more than likely that you will survive the journey by land.

It is an inconvienience but I would be really suprised if the powers that be haven't already thought about it. After all, it is probably cheaper to air lift more people than keep a unit running 24 / 7?

In reply to Jon Dittman:

I was unfortunate to fall in the Coe and was very fortunate to be airlifted to Fort William.

If Glasgow or Inverness were my accident and emergency port of call I would not be here now.

If they close Belford and the seriously injured have to go to Glasgow or Inverness people like us just aint going to make it.

In reply to Jon Dittman:
Point one. Glasgow and Inverness are both about 80 miles further away from the Ben than the Belford. Sea king helicopters are slow.
Poaint two. Belford A&E isn't exclusivly for climbers benefit. One or two people actualy live in the area and may not be too happy about non 24/7 A7E cover.

In reply to theestivator: Exactly- my girlfriends dad would be missing half his face if it wasn't for the belford following an accident at home in ardnamurchan.

In reply to UKC News:

Signed the petition. Three of my friends have all had the misfortune to rely on the Belford's emergency services, all after climbing accidents. None of the injuries were life-threatening, but one of them may not be walking today if it weren't for the rapid intervention that the Belford were able to make.

In reply to UKC News:
Have signed the petition

The whole problem of rural or small hospitals is going to be increasingly difficult as time goes by.

Junior doctors will shortly come under the European Working Time Directive leading to less hours and so the need for more junior doctors, where do they come from?

Similiarly Consultant numbers are hoping to increase but the training of consultants tends to produce speciality doctors eg diabetologists or renal physicians rather than the "old-fashioned" generalist physician or surgeon who may be more appropriate in a rural setting with only very few consultants in the hospital.

To retain junior doctors in training there are increasing hoops to jump through. There have to be good educational opportunities for juniors (quite rightly), these include a reasonable patient throughput which may be lacking in a small hospital, it depends on having adequate supporting specialities ie if there is no paediatric dept this may lead to withdrawal of approval for obstetric posts, this in turn may effect anaesthetic posts and if approval for that is rescinded where does the future of the surgical department lie?

Sadly other than funding and good recruitment - presumably led by the benefits of living in an area like Fort William - I have no answers. This problem will affect more areas soon!

In reply to UKC News:

I sent my own letter in months ago, when Davy Gunn first posted the news.

I thought the issue had now been resolved. When I asked on here a couple of weeks ago about the proposals re A & E at Belford, one of the locals said that they'd had 6,000 letters of objection and a public meeting attended by 2000 to protest against it, so the health trust had kicked the idea into touch.

So has it or hasn't it?

In reply to UKC News: Petition signed...this centralisation of medical services 'may' be good in city areas but not in places where even helicopters take significant amounts of time to go between points...

In reply to Rob Naylor:

So did I.

In reply to UKC News:

Signed & thread posted on outdoorsmagic & bikemagic forums.

In reply to Mal Grey:

Just trying to keep the thread going! Come on guys, this needs our support!

In reply to Mal Grey:

A lot of people put in their objections when Davy Gunn first posted the proposal about 4 months ago, hence the apparent low level of interest.

I was under the impression that, having had 6,000 letters of objection and a public meeting of 2,000 people, with another 500 unable to get in, that the health trust had knocked the idea of reducing Belford's provision on the head.

So, as I asked above, what *is* the true situation? Is the threat of service reduction still there despite the previous meetings and letter campaign, or not?

In reply to Rob Naylor:

A report on the meeting here Rob;

http://www.tartanhen.co.uk/appin/belford.htm

More details from NHS jargonbuster;

Sub-acute Care An alternative term for intermediate care

Intermediate care Nursing home, rehabilitation or home care services provided to ease the transition of the patient from hospital to home and from medical dependence to functional independence

Not much joy there then. Make the Belford into a nursing home or convalescent home.

Website here;

http://www.hwph-tr.org.uk/patient_info/nhs_jargon_buster.htm

In reply to UKC News: Sounds like bad news to me. For climbers but especially locals. Whoever suggested that an airlift wouldn't take much longer to get to GlasgowInverness was obviously looking at it from a climbing point of view. Do you think they would launch a helicopter everytime someone has a heart attackmajor accident out of hours. 2 hours in an ambulance is a long time...... If I lived in Fort william I would feel very uncomfortable about this situation.

In reply to UKC News:

Yes - as a Weegie I don't want you sheepshaggers clogging up my A&E
Signed.

In reply to UKC News: keep thread going...

In reply to donrobson:
Signed.
I'm afraid Don's hit the nail on the head and there's a lot more of this sort of thing to come.
The NHS Plan (WWW.doh.org.uk if interested) relies on sums which just don't add up. It has promised a consultant-delivered service long before consultant numbers can possibly provide for this if all existing facilities are staffed.
Both consultants and juniors will be limited to 48hrs by the EWTD meaning fewer doctor-hours worked overall at least in the short to medium term until loads more docs are trained. The new training structures for juniors will increasingly make them supernumary "students" rather than service deliverers as has traditionally been the case, further reducing available hours of doctor-work. Also, as Don mentions, the increasing subspecialisation of consultants militates against the continued existence of many small hospitals - when I was med student in the 80s a typical smallish district general might have 3 each of physicians, general surgeons and orthopaedics, nowadays you can at least double that to make viable units. Trauma care in particular is being concentrated in large regional trauma centres on the grounds that this is the only way to provide state of the art round the clock care. This does discriminate against people in out of the way places. More and more is being asked of paramedics to bridge this gap. I'm not offering any answers I'm afraid but things do look pretty grim for the future of hospitals like Ft W no matter how much we complain.
As ever you are left asking the question was the plan written by liars or over-optimistic idiots or a bit of both?
Cheers, Paul

In reply to UKC News:
Signed and link fowarded to about 180 club members, one of whom made use of the facilities at Belford recently. The surgical ward made for an interesting hogmanay party venue...