Minister to speak out on hospital staff site vote

Tuesday 04 September 2018

Jersey's Health Minister is going to have to state whether he supports a vote for doctors, nurses and surgeons over the final hospital site after more than 1,000 islanders signed a petition urging him to back the ballot.

Under the new e-petition rules, the Minister, Deputy Richard Renouf, now has 28 days to respond.

But Dave Cabeldu, a hospital patient and long-term campaigner, who launched the petition, is pushing for him to respond even sooner.

He has now written to the Minister, making an urgent request for a decision to be made ahead of the second planning inquiry into the future hospital proposals. 

"...We have very good reason to believe that a ballot will show that reconstructing a new hospital on the existing site is not the hospital staffs’ preferred solution. Should this prove to be the case, this factor should urgently be taken into consideration alongside the forthcoming outcome of Inspector Philip Staddon’s forthcoming Inquiry," Mr Cabeldu wrote.

Mr Cabeldu started the petition after expressing fears that some staff may have felt gagged from expressing their true opinions, with several consultants apparently telling him that they had been “’encouraged’ to support the official line.”

Pictured: Dr Miklos Kassai, a Consultant and colorectal surgeon, said that the hospital was “barely fit for purpose."

His efforts were then publicly backed by respected consultant and colorectal surgeon Dr Miklos Kassai, who voiced strong concerns over the health and wellbeing implications of building on the current site for staff, patients and visitors alike, even warning that the decision could spark a "mass exodus" of staff.

Health officials disagreed with the consultant’s assessment and assured islanders that safety would be a "number one priority" throughout the site's construction.

They also gave assurances that the team leading the future hospital project were working "in partnership with doctors, nurses and other stakeholders and would be providing regular briefs on the project.”

But Mr Cabeldu told the Health Minister in his letter that "the situation could not be more different."

Pictured: Health officials said that hospital staff were being actively involved in the planning process, but others disagreed that this was the case.

He added that the statement "jars" with what many health professionals have been saying since his petition was launched. "It confirms research I carried out over five weeks whilst an in-patient last year. Hospital staff across all areas, including senior consultants, anaesthetists, nurses, etc, say that they have not been consulted, but rather, told what was going to happen."

Evidencing that view, he included in his letter the view of an anonymous nurse who explains that the only attempt to reach out to staff about the future hospital project came in the form of an email from a communications officer inviting staff to one of three half-hour sessions to "find out about the submission of a revised planning application for a new hospital on the current site, and to ask questions of the project team." According to the nurse, these sounded more like "a brief rather than them asking our preferences, views and opinions."

"We need people coming to the wards to speak to us face-to-face, actively involving us. Asking what we struggle with and how things could be improved. I would say the majority of people I know here think the hospital should be on a different site," they added.

Mr Cabeldu is therefore asking the Health Minister to seize the "golden opportunity to salvage the situation and start with a clean sheet."

Pictured: Campaigner Dave Cabeldu has written to the Health Minister in the hope he will reply before the 28-day period lapses. 

"The threat that millions that have been spent (albeit on ill founded assumptions) are now being used to pressure you into ‘get on with it’ and compound the monumental blunders of your predecessor," he wrote.

"A substantial part of the expenditure to date may well still be of practical use should a new site be selected. This should be identified and evaluated since it would reasonably count as part of the cost of the new hospital. The balance could then, quite justifiably, be written off and attributed to the previous CoMs."

A committee of inquiry, set up to investigate whether the last States Assembly's decision to build the hospital on its current site was the right one is expected to give its findings next month, around the time that the outcome of the second 'Future Hospital' planning inquiry will be published.

Led by Constable Chris Taylor and supported by the new Director General for Growth, Housing and Environment, the review board is analysing all evidence available to States Members at the time of their site decision.