Dr Gray's makes staffing progress
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FIVE doctors are lined up to start work at Dr Gray's Hospital next month – building hopes that new women and children’s services will be fully up and running by next spring.
The fresh recruits – four GP trainees and a foundation-year doctor – will join a new training scheme which was put in place to make Moray’s flagship hospital a more attractive prospect for trainee medics.
The scheme appears to be successful in attracting new blood – with three times as many applying for positions as did last year before its introduction.
Severe difficulties in attracting doctors to Moray last year forced the scaling down of maternity and children’s services.
And only two of the eight required trainee doctors were identified for the August 2018 intake of new recruits – forcing NHS Grampian to rethink recruitment methods.
Local campaigners and politicians welcomed the progress but warned much work lay ahead to secure Dr Gray's services.
The five new doctors will join the new prescribing pharmacist in place at Dr Gray’s and seven advanced nurse practitioners due to complete their training in December. The advanced nurse practitioners are part of a specially commissioned, £1 million training course being run by Robert Gordon University in conjunction with NHS Grampian. A further foundation doctor is now also being sought.
Dr Jamie Hogg, clinical lead for Dr Gray’s Hospital, worked closely with NHS Education for Scotland to develop the new doctors in training programme. He said: "We’re delighted the new scheme seems to be proving effective so far. It’s still the early stages, but to get three times the number of qualified applicants as we did this time last year is really good news.
"We looked carefully at how we could make the hospital more attractive to new doctors and put in place a number of unique training features based on the feedback we got. That includes protected study time, increased clinic working and, crucially, restricting the number of out-of-hours and overnight shifts."
Dr Hogg added: "All in all, we are pleased to be making this kind of progress but there is still more to do before we can step up the service safely. Continued, successful recruitment is going to be vital, both for the women and children’s specialty and for the interlinked services across the hospital."
Kirsty Watson, Keep MUM campaign spokeswoman, said questions remained about maternity services. She said: "We fully support all efforts being made to attract staff to Dr Gray’s Hospital but remain cautious because we know that the service was downgraded in July 2018 because of a failure by NHS Grampian to plan ahead.
"NHS Grampian is saying that women and children’s services in Moray are in line for a significant boost next month following confirmation that five new doctors have been recruited at Dr Gray’s Hospital. What exactly does this mean in terms of stepping up the maternity service? What improvements can we expect to see in August?
"Dr Hogg says that there is more to do before the maternity service can be safely stepped up. We think it’s important that he tells the people of Moray exactly what needs to be done to have the full consultant maternity service up and running."
Moray Conservative MP Douglas Ross said: "This is excellent news for Moray as the lack of doctors and junior doctors and failure to retain newly qualifying doctors has created significant difficulties for Dr Gray’s and resulted in a reduction of services and closure of wards.
"However, despite this, we need to be cautious because there is still a lot of work to be done to attract and retain more doctors and nurses to Moray. We therefore need to maintain the pressure on NHS Grampian and the Scottish Government so that Moray has the hospital and health service it deserves."
Moray SNP MSP Richard Lochhead said: "I know the team at Dr Gray’s have put a lot of effort into making the hospital a more attractive place for trainee doctors to work and it’s great to see the new model is having some early success.
"We still have a long way to go and there remains some big challenges facing the hospital in terms of recruitment, but this is certainly a positive step forward and I hope that NHS Grampian can build on this to ensure it has the staff it needs to sustain our valued services in Elgin."
Last month Pam Gowans, NHS Grampian’s executive lead for Dr Gray’s, said they would "pull out all the stops" to attract recruits to Dr Gray's.
