A librarian at the high security state hospital Carstairs was forced to help cover a shift on a ward as a recruitment shortage plunges the facility into a staffing crisis. Whistleblowers claim the failure to attract new staff to the hospital is putting current staff and patients at risk and said "it's an accident waiting to happen."
Staff said dieticians, psychologists and occupational therapists have also been drafted in to help out with ward deficits despite not being trained. Hospital chiefs have been sending urgent appeals to employees looking for volunteers for emergency on-call work which could be either helping on patient escorts outside the hospital or providing back-up when other staff are unavailable.
A source said: "Other staff disciplines working in the wards to help fill the deficit is an accident waiting to happen. We keep being told there will never be an incident like what happened in 1976 but something like that or worse is on the cards. Management say that was then and we live in a different time now and that will never happen."
The whistleblower said the librarian was basically a tick on a sheet to make the numbers "look good." They said: "It was earlier this month. She was just considered part of the ward staff and expected to do what other staff do. She has no experience of ward working and if something had happened she wouldn't have been able to do anything."
Among the patients currently housed there is James Dunleavy, an “untreatable psychopath”, who killed his mum Philomena at his Edinburgh home in 2013 before cutting up her body and burying her in a shallow grave.
Another source said: "Patients are basically being left locked in their rooms and I'm sure the mental health welfare commission are unaware of the full impact this is having on patients.They are struggling to recruit new staff due to the ridiculous shift pattern that was implemented."
"It used to be four on and two off but some new starts can work a full seven days without any breaks as they don't get paid for them. The hospital is rural so many staff have to travel a fair distance to get there and coupled with the hours there is no work life balance. Even the promise of £4000 secure bonus payment isn't enough to entice new workers.
"It is not going to surprise anyone who works there if someone is seriously hurt, patient or staff member. Something needs to be done."
Killers Robert Mone and Thomas McCulloch went on a murderous rampage in the Lanarkshire facility in 1976 and left three people dead, including a nurse, patient and police officer.
Mone, 27, and McCulloch, 26, broke out of the hospital after murdering nurse Neil McLellan, 46, and another inmate, 40-year-old double murderer Iain Simpson.
PC George Taylor and colleague PC John Gillies spotted two men standing on Carnwath Road on the outskirts of Carstairs, near to a car, and stopped to see if they could help. Both were brutally attacked by Mone and McCulloch.
PC Gillies managed to escape and raise the alarm at a nearby house. PC Taylor, who was in a very serious condition and bleeding heavily, was rushed to nearby Law Hospital but died a short time later.
The two escapees then stole the police van, which they crashed 10 miles away near Biggar and tried to murder two other men.
They were eventually caught in Cumbria.
A spokeswoman for Carstairs said: "It is a priority for the State Hospital to ensure the delivery of safe and effective patient care, and to make the necessary temporary adjustments to achieve this. Clinical adjustments are pre-planned to maintain staff and patient safety at all times.
“Within the State Hospital we have well-rehearsed plans and procedures in place to ensure our patients continue to receive the care and treatment they require, and these have been applied consistently across the course of the pandemic to ensure front line patient care is prioritised.
“All our clinicians are members of multi-disciplinary teams, and trained to work in front line patient care. During peaks in Covid absence, this sometimes means that we need to deploy them to where they are most needed across the Hospital.
“Additionally, significant steps have been taken to maintain our nursing workforce to its funded establishment through proactive nursing recruitment campaigns and the introduction of a Supplementary Staffing Register. We will continue to manage our workforce resources in the most flexible way, as we continue to live with Covid-19.”
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