Madam,

I’m replying to the article titled 'Wards not safely staffed due to lack of qualified nurses' in which I questioned the levels of staffing on particular wards in Bronglais Hospital.

My aim is not to denigrate what the health board is doing or attempting to do, but just to point out that just shifting people from one ward to another or trying to operate a ward on a ‘close to risk’ level is not what the Safe Nursing level Bill was demanding of the health boards!

I would really like some explanation regarding their reply: “Staff being moved to help in areas where needed”. This policy has to be totally unsafe. The majority of nursing these days is far more specialist than say 10 or even 20 years ago.

What assurances do we, as the tax-paying patient, have that they will not deploy, say, a nurse who deals primarily with orthopaedics to the Cardiac Monitoring Unit (a very specialist area)?

My point is this. It’s about money and, whatever the health board says, it is. Money should not and cannot be the driver of how hospitals are staffed. Proactive shift management has to be the safest way forward, as reactive management will, in the end, have dire consequences. Then who is going to take the blame?

Yours etc,

Paul Hinge, former chairman of Hywel Dda Community Health Council, Tregerddan, Bow Street, Aberystwyth.

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