The care crisis on the Isle of Wight is causing gridlock in the Island’s only hospital – being described as almost the perfect storm by one of the top health bosses.
A critical level of staff vacancies across the adult social care sector on the Island has led to pressure points created in all levels of health care.
Last week, at St Mary’s Hospital in Newport, the discharges of almost 2 full wards of patients were being delayed because of lack of vacancies in the community.
Speaking at the Isle of Wight NHS Trust Board meeting, chief operating officer, Joe Smyth said care packages and short-term community placements were not available and patients were being held up in the hospital ‘far longer than was absolutely necessary’.
Solutions put forward by the trust, Dr Lesley Stevens, director of community, mental health and learning disabilities said, working in partnership with community teams, include supporting and enabling care homes to have more confidence taking greater numbers of people in, among other measures.
Emergency admissions are also up and this has meant the hospital has approached a gridlock situation multiple times.
Mr Smyth said:
“It is almost a perfect storm occurring; we cannot get people out, we have a Covid third wave and above normal emergency admissions. All of that is being juggled.”
On several occasions, Mr Smyth said there had been more than 20 people waiting in the emergency department for a bed elsewhere in the hospital. Thankfully, Mr Smyth said, the situation was being managed but all it took was a high admissions day and a low discharge day before the hospital’s contingency was blown.
Overall, he said the trust had not been collecting larger numbers of patients, adding:
“We are working on this all together but there is not an easy solution for social care to be able to magic up the people that are able to fill these posts.
“There is hope on the horizon but it is very fragile and a long process to recruit people in but they are working hard.”
And we’re just about to have a massive festival! Well, disaster is on the horizon …
Get back under your bed. Why??
i agree what with more houses being built which will not house 1 house 1 person but on average 4 perhousehold , will they test any festival goers for covid ?will they now were masks ? Bob Seely you watch the hospitols and increase in cases on this island ,no doubt he will not blame the festival goers just like Xmas Time ,and again easter when the case numbers increased ,Boris You have let the people down
Add thousands more homes here, and bring in 20,000 extra for the UK to treat, nurse, pension and house, that will surely help………….wouldn’t it?
Don’t forget the boats arriving daily, and I am not refering to the ferries, all adding greatly to the, and many other of our problems here.
A critical level of staff vacancies across the adult social care sector on the Island has led to pressure points created in all levels of health care.
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This is what happens when you try to force people to have a jab or no job in the care sector.
They are leaving in their droves, rather than be dictated to about what goes into their bodies – and now that is backfiring on the government – they have a new problem – care worker shortages, because they are trying to force them to have the jab – short sighted fools
If carers were paid a decent wage this would help, a very high percentage of people that work in the community and in homes are already double vaccinated. Why deal with stress and worry when you can work in a shop for more money. If the council paid a decent amount for care packages this extra money could go to the staff.