The Western Trust says the idea of a 'golden hour' when it comes to transferring patients for emergency surgery was a 'huge misconception' after a campaign group claimed people in Co Fermanagh were 6% more likely to die as a result of service changes at the South West Acute Hospital
The Trust also said in a media briefing on Monday that no applicants met the criteria in a recent recruitment drive for consultant general surgeons at the Enniskillen hospital.
Providing an update on the first week of a reduced rota for emergency general surgery at the Co Fermanagh hospital since the controversial decision to withdraw the service, the Trust said there were a number of applicants for the roles but that none had met the essential criteria.
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From 18 December, The Trust will no longer have an emergency general surgery rota at the SWAH, in what it describes as a ‘temporary, unplanned decision’.
When asked at Monday's briefing how long it would take for the temporary change to end up becoming permanent, in the event that the difficulties in recruiting staff were to continue, medical director Brendan Lavery admitted he didn’t know what the relevant regulations are.
“You’re asking a question I can’t answer, I don’t know what the regulations are. I just know at this moment in time it is temporary because we can’t get staff," he said.
“The reason we don't have a service is because we don't have staff to staff it. So we're not in a position to predict when we'll be able to recruit the appropriate numbers.
“We can’t time recruitment, it wouldn’t be something that we can do. We can advertise, we can look for staff but for me to give you a prediction would be completely false.”
Lavery would not answer a question about what specific criteria from the job description applicants for the surgeon jobs did not meet, saying such information would disclose doctors’ personal information.
The Trust confirmed 12 patients had been transferred to Altnagelvin as a result of the changes in the last week, with Lavery saying the vast majority of those not requiring emergency general surgery.
Many in the community have pointed out the majority of the population in Co Fermanagh are now outside what is known as the ‘golden hour’ of being within 60 minutes of a hospital with emergency general surgery.
Earlier on Monday, the Save Our Acute Services campaign group published a report which claimed people in Co Fermanagh who fell outside the ‘golden hour’ were 6% more likely to die as a result of the changes to services in the SWAH.
Its research was carried out by data experts and local active and retired medical professionals, and showed that 58,607 people, 87% of the county’s population is now more than 60 minutes drive away from an ED with emergency surgery.
It said that the county town of Enniskillen is one of the worst areas affected, with travelling time increasing from eight minutes on average to 82 minutes.
However, Lavery says the concept of the ‘golden hour’ was a ‘huge misconception’.
“The golden hour comes from the 1980s and it is to do with trauma management, absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with general surgery,” he said.
“So it is kind of used in an inappropriate way. Initially the idea behind the golden hour was that it was to do with trauma management back in the 1980s, whenever we managed a lot of things in an operative way, which for example nowadays we wouldn’t.
“The idea of a golden hour per se is a very outdated concept. You can do a Google search, there’s no such thing as a golden hour with regards to emergency general surgery.”
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