Nicola Sturgeon to face the public over NHS Fife A&E closures
Health secretary Nicola Sturgeon will face the wrath of the public next week when she chairs NHS Fife's annual review in Kirkcaldy, The Courier can reveal.
Health secretary Nicola Sturgeon talks to Courier reporter Aileen Robertson at St Andrews House, Edinburgh.
- By Aileen Robertson
- Published in the Courier : 13.08.10
- Published online : 13.08.10 @ 11.04am
Public health minister Shona Robison was set to chair the event at Kirkcaldy's Victoria Hospital on Tuesday.
But in an exclusive interview with The Courier — during which she praised this newspaper's State of Emergency Burning Issues campaign — Ms Sturgeon said she wanted to be there in person.
She told The Courier, "Given some of the issues that we've seen in the last few weeks, I've taken the decision to chair this session myself.
"It's right, given the concerns that people have had and the issues that Fife are grappling with, that I go and make sure that we're asking them the right questions and that people are hearing the answers.
"Members of the public who, I absolutely understand, are concerned about the accident and emergency services, can come along if they want to and hear us discuss these issues in a public session."
She added, "The more the public can get involved in decisions about the health service, and express the passion that's been expressed through your pages in recent days, the better, in my view.
"I always welcome public and — people might find this a bit strange — media interest in the health service, because people are passionate about the health service. I'm passionate about the health service.
"It's personal to us, we all care about it and we all rely on it at various times in our lives, so I really welcome public engagement."
Pressure to act
Ms Sturgeon has been under pressure from opposition politicians to act on accident and emergency closures at Victoria.
Difficulties in drawing up doctors' rotas for Fife's two A&E sites — at Victoria and Queen Margaret Hospital in Dunfermline — and restrictions on hiring locums from abroad led to NHS Fife drawing up the contingency measure of temporarily downgrading the Victoria A&E overnight.
With health boards taking on newly qualified junior doctors in August, Ms Sturgeon said NHS Fife's intake this year was sufficient to keep both A&E units open, but there was still no guarantee the contingency would not be used again because there was always the possibility of staff going off ill.
She said, "NHS Fife have an experienced and very capable management team.
"Like all management teams in the NHS, they deal with very difficult circumstances."
She added, "I think they were right to put the contingency arrangement in place because patient safety has to come first in everything the health service does.
"I'm very clear with Fife, and Fife have been reassuring me, that will be a last resort."
Reconfiguring services
Ms Sturgeon said she had confidence in the reconfiguration of services under Right For Fife, which will see a single A&E at Victoria serving the region from 2012.
She said, "The new Victoria Hospital is obviously a massive investment. I have no doubt that significant patient benefits will flow from that."
As for the national picture, an Audit Scotland report this week warned of "emerging staffing difficulties" at A&E units across the country and called for a national solution. Ms Sturgeon said that the government was working towards resolving the problem.
She said, "We're involved in a strand of work just now that's called Reshaping The Medical Workforce. Basically, a lot of service delivery in hospitals is done by doctors in training.
"We're trying to shift to a situation where most of the service is delivered by trained doctors and doctors in training are simply there being trained."
She added, "It will, over the medium to long term, deal with some of the shorter-term issues we've been experiencing, not just in Fife."
On the issue of funding challenges, Ms Sturgeon is hoping the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government at Westminster delivers benefits for Scotland.
She said, "The UK Government has given a commitment to a real terms increase in the health budget. That's welcome and I hope they stick to that because if they do then we'll be able to pass on the consequential money that we get in Scotland to the health service in Scotland.
"It doesn't mean that the health service won't have some difficult financial challenges ahead, but it does mean that it'll be in a better position than it might have been otherwise."
Add a comment