Patient to staff ratios at Pinderfields and Dewsbury Hospitals at 'dangerous levels', UNISON says

UNISON said frontline healthcare workers at Pinderfields, Pontefract and Hospitals were "burnt out" as the local Covid infection rate remains extremely high.

The Mid Yorkshire NHS Trust, which runs all three sites, acknowledged last week that its staff were "tired" and spread "very, very thinly" across wards.

Despite a slight dip in the number of patients being treated for the virus in the middle of last week, admissions increased again to 325 on Tuesday.

Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford MP Yvette Cooper called on the government to urgently "provide more staffing support" to the trust in an interview with BBC Look North earlier this week.

But Adrian O'Malley, UNISON's local branch secretary, said he "had no idea" where more frontline workers would come from.

"There aren't loads of nurses just waiting to bail out Pinderfields or any hospital anywhere in the country," Mr O'Malley said.

"There was a serious shortage of nurses before the pandemic - 40,000 across the country. From that point of view, it was inevitable we were going to be in this situation.

"The government is responsible for this because they attacked bursaries and training for nurses over several years. It's their policies that have left us where we are."

"We tried to get nurses in from abroad, but we can't even do that now because of the quarantine rules."

Mr O'Malley added there was "no sign of the problems ending", with the NHS now having to cope with normal winter pressures unrelated to the pandemic.

Mid Yorkshire said earlier this month that the number of Covid patients may peak this coming weekend, if patterns from the spring lockdown are repeated.

Mr O'Malley said the trust was doing "the best it could", to help staff cope, but added: "Staff to patient ratios are now at dangerous levels.

"That's not a criticism of our management. This is happening at hospitals in Liverpool, Newcastle and everywhere else. It's a nationwide crisis.

"Staff are burnt out and they're tired."

Local Democracy Reporting Service