Dear Anna
I am deeply concerned about the announcement this week that Derriford Hospital is expected to save £67m recurrently from its budget.
The trust has taken away staff cups of tea and raised staff parking fees, but this is a drop in the ocean.
The only way these cuts are truly possible is to shed around 600 staff from the trust. A trust that is already massively under-staffed.
The announcement that it is mainly from non-frontline is firstly little comfort, and secondly, short-sighted. Doctors and nurses often are the headline grabbers but it takes an army of support staff to actually allow them to do their job. We don’t have safe numbers of staff to begin with, so how exactly is this going to help patients?
My discipline of Pathology, specifically in my case Histopathology is constantly struggling to meet patients needs. Without some kind of pathology involvement the hospital simply couldn’t treat any patients, as around 80 per cent of patients will need some kind of pathology test during their stay. And yet, today, we were told that we have a recruitment freeze, an overtime freeze and if staff leave we cannot replace them.
This is insanity, as my profession diagnoses cancer and give clinicians the tools to actually treat those cancers and save lives. We have been chronically under-funded and under-staffed since I started my career in 2006 and we were just about getting enough staff (with overtime) to keep on top of the 380,000 cancer specimens we receive per annum. Even then we aren’t giving results as quickly as we would like to thanks to over a decade of Tory cuts already severely damaging our service.
Having these conditions imposed on us will be disastrous and is a kick in the teeth for those like me who have dedicated twenty years of intense education and hard work to help those in the greatest need get the treatment they desperately need. I believe in the NHS and want to dedicate the next twenty years to it. Not constantly be scared it’s under threat from politicians who don’t understand how it works. I personally think my job will be safe but it will be harder to do, less efficient and less timely as a result of this ridiculous spending decision which will see the support staff I rely on atrophy away, leaving a gutted service in its wake. That will destroy morale and reduce the speed we can give life-saving results to patients.
Also, cutting skilled relatively well paid jobs in such an economically deprived area as the south west will make things worse down here at a time we can least afford it.
I voted Labour for real change, I have always voted Labour and was once a member. I am also a shop steward for unison so I believe in the Labour movement. I did not for Labour for them to do worse things to us than the Tories did! This decision needs to be changed and funding needs to be released immediately to prevent this disaster happening, otherwise the health service in Plymouth will suffer horrendously.
Tax the rich instead of putting hard-working, under-paid, under-appreciated NHS workers out of a job.
I would invite Mr Streeting to visit a struggling pathology department, look staff in the eye and tell them why it is ok to cut further flesh from the bones of their already emaciated service.
Kind regards
Carl Garner