Health staff sleeping "on site" to ensure services keep running

Wednesday 28 February 2018

In view of the worsening weather forecast into Thursday, the Committee for Health and Social Care took the decision to provide key staff the option to sleep on site at the PEH with mattresses installed on Tuesday afternoon for those who wanted to take up the offer.

HSC said in a statement on Tuesday afternoon that its own service continuity arrangements for staff during wintry conditions were implemented "ensuring that the majority of its services can continue to function."

HSC also wanted to "thank all their operational teams and staff for their hard work so far to ensure our services continue to run for the public in Guernsey and Alderney."

Alderney was hit much harder by snow than Guernsey on Monday night, but during Tuesday, all Mignot Memorial hospital staff made their way in to work and services all ran as scheduled.  The Medivac service via Aurigny was not running because the airport was closed so in the event a medical flight was needed from Alderney, the  decision was made to implement the islands' helicopter contingency option if required.

HSC said during such inclement weather, the first priority is the transportation of staff to and from HSC sites to ensure continuation of service delivery:

"In this regard, our snow transport plan has been implemented this afternoon (Tuesday) to enable staff to get home safely at shift changeover this afternoon / evening.

"Our second priority is the transportation and collection of clients to and from Day Centre and Day Hospital appointments. Because of the impact of school closures (on Tuesday) however, please note that some elective surgery at the Princess Elizabeth Hospital was cancelled today but priority surgery will still go ahead as required."

Community staff who visit service users in their own homes also activated their snow plans during Tuesday but efforts were made to "minimise any disruption to their service" although some cancellations may have been "inevitable" with service users being contacted if that had to be done. 

HSC said: "Safety has to be paramount and HSC fully understands if any patient feels that it is too dangerous to attempt the journey to attend an appointment. If this is the case however, please get in touch on 725241 as soon as possible to discuss with our staff and rearrange."

Meanwhile, Guernsey's Medical Specialist Group said assuming all staff could reach the site today it would be "business as usual” – but a spokesman said "safety when travelling to and from the MSG must be paramount for both our staff and our patients."

While a high number of appointments were cancelled by patients yesterday, the MSG was able to re-arrange some of the remaining late-afternoon appointments so staff could all finish by 15:00 to ensure they could get home safely.

A high number of cancellations are also expected today – and patients are asked to call the MSG on 238565, with as much notice as possible if they do not feel able to attend an appointment today.

The MSG added: "if re-arranging some afternoon appointments is possible again today to enable an early finish, all affected patients will be contacted accordingly, but we will continue to monitor the situation as the day progresses."