'We have a moral duty to face difficult decisions', says Shropshire hospitals boss
The man in charge of Shropshire's two main hospitals says board members must not shy away from decisions to keep A&E departments safe.
Simon Wright, the group's chief executive, warned that there is a "moral and professional duty" to tackle difficult decisions in the interests of patients.
He made the claim yesterday at the December meeting of Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust's board.
Earlier this week the trust announced that its fears over the fragility of A&E services at Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and Princess Royal Hospital Telford mean it has begun work on "tipping points", which if triggered could lead to the overnight closure of one A&E department.
Mr Wright told his fellow board members that it is important the public understands the desire to maintain services at both sites, but that they could not duck the issue if the "tipping points" are reached.
He said: "If that process is reached and the board cannot continue to be assured of the safety of patients we will have to intervene. We have a responsibility as a board to do that. That is clear, but we do not want to reach that point."
A staff crisis affecting care: The trust talks of irretrievable gaps in staffing that would lead the service to become unsafe. It talks of sustained non-availability of medical staffing.
Issues involving problems experienced with hospital buildings, described as irretrievable failure of estate or infrastructure. This could be an issue involving a department no longer fit for use.
Medical issues that could compromise care within A&E. The trust speaks of the issues as an irretrievable failure of essential clinical adjacency in critical care or diagnostics.
He added: "It is really important the public understands we are trying to maintain our services. We are not trying to close anything or restrict access, we want both our hospitals to be safe so we are working really hard to make appointments so we can continue to do that. But we could never forgive ourselves that if when faced with whose difficult decisions we have to front up to them. We have a moral and a professional duty to face up to that."
Peter Latchford, chairman of the trust board, also voiced his fears about the strain being placed on staff who are trying to maintain the level of service at the hospitals.
He said: "One of my concerns was one of our tipping points ought to be the duty of care to those people, which we have over an extended period of time expected them to behave heroically.
"At some point we need to say enough is enough. Whatever the nasty PR we might get, we might need to say this cannot happen any longer because we cannot do that to these people."
Mr Latchford had also questioned Debbie Kadum, chief operating officer, on whether she was confident that the "tipping points" will be clearly identified.
In response Mrs Kadum said she hoped new measures would prevent the hospitals reaching that point.
