It is a scandal that nursing staff, already under immense work pressure, are being left to run wards single-handedly.
On one day this week at least five separate wards in Scotland’s showpiece hospital , the QEUH, had just one registered nurse in charge of an estimated 30 patients.
While nurses were assisted by other staff, it is the expertise of registered nurses which can make the difference between life and death.
Patients’ lives are being put at risk by the lack of staff on wards and if mistakes are made it will ultimately be these hard-pressed nurses who will carry the can.
The spike in Covid cases has hit hospital staff as well as the general public and the situation is now at crisis point.
We have seen record waiting times at A&E and ambulances stacked up outside.
And now there are exhausted nurses, already on their knees from two years of Covid, being put upon even further with no signs of the Scottish Government’s promised safe staffing levels being introduced any time soon.
On top of this nurses are being offered wage rises far below the rate of inflation.
It is little wonder they are leaving the profession in their droves, Labour’s health spokeswoman Jackie Baillie says that Health Secretary Humza Yousaf has been repeatedly warned about the staffing crisis.
And he needs to stop sticking his head in the sand and act before more lives are lost.
On this latest evidence it would seem she is right.
The Government must do more to prevent this inexcusable burden on our hard-working nursing staff.
Tory circus no laughing matter
The travelling circus known as the Tory leadership contest rolls into Perth in August but is there any point?
It will just be another chapter in the vicious fight between Liz Truss, the Thatcher tribute act, and Rishi Sunak, the multi-millionaire.
Consumed by their own ambition and the narrow demands of right-wing Tories for tax cuts, the candidates have little to say to Scotland or indeed the rest of the United Kingdom.
Beyond refusing SNP demands for a second independence referendum with the standard Boris Johnson rebuff, they have provided little clue of what their alternative ideas are for keeping the
UK together.
These Tory wannabes cannot build a vision of a United Kingdom simply based on the word “no”.
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