RCN raises concerns over Belfast emergency care reconfiguration
Published: 10 May 2013
The Royal College of Nursing [RCN] in Northern Ireland believes that consultation proposals for the reconfiguration of emergency care services within the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust raise a number of concerns over the future of emergency service provision at the Mater Hospital. The RCN also questions many of the assumptions made in the consultation document about recent improvements to services within Belfast.
The RCN's response to the Health and Social Care Board [HSCB] consultation is informed by direct engagement with the RCN Emergency Care Network in Northern Ireland, representing RCN members practising on the frontline in all emergency care departments across the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust and in emergency departments across each HSC Trust across Northern Ireland.
The RCN endorses, in general terms, the consultation document's conclusion that the three-site emergency department service in Belfast cannot be sustained. However, RCN members have expressed concern over the long-term future of emergency services at the Mater Hospital and believe that the consultation provided an important opportunity to clarify the intentions of the HSCB and the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust in this respect. Will resources be allocated in order to allow the Mater Hospital to retain the full range of emergency department services for the foreseeable future, or will there be a process of a managed scaling-down of services?
RCN members practising in emergency care within the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust do not believe that many of the “service improvements” identified in the consultation document, particularly in relation to patient experience and staff development, have actually been secured.
Finally, the RCN believes that the trust has had the opportunity to explore the impact of the changes that have taken place since the temporary closure of the emergency department at Belfast City Hospital some eighteen months ago. It is important that the impact of these changes is fully evaluated and that appropriate adjustments are made in the light of this evaluation.