X-RAY CLOSURE?

Thanks for the post from the concerned member of staff with regard to the x-ray department: The first thing we did on receipt of the information was to check the situation with both the PCT and the hospital trust. The Primary Care Trust were unaware of any such proposals and the Acute Trust responded with the quotes below.

"The radiology/imaging department of Shotley Bridge is not closing. "

"Every year, all departments in all of our hospitals - including radiology - have to look at ways of running services more efficiently so that we make the best use of tax payers' money. Shotley Bridge is no exception.
If any service closure like this was to be proposed, our view is that it would certainly require public consultation." Edmund Lovell

It is important to everyone that we stay vigilant so that people are kept up to date with everything that is happening but we also need to make proposals about services that are positive and reflect the needs of the community.

ALEX WATSON

Questionnaire

Q1. Given the option by your GP, would you use Shotley Bridge Hospital as your first choice?

Yes No


Q2. If the following services were to be proposed for Shotley Bridge Hospital, how would you prioritise them? (Please write a number in the relevant box, with 1 being the most important)


1) Urgent Care Centre (GP out of hours, nurse practitioners and minor injuries, all working in one unit)

2) Chronic illness centre (focusing on long-term conditions)

3) Diagnostic Centre (MRI scanner)

4) GP beds / intermediate care

5) Palliative care beds


Q3. If you could not access current services at Shotley Bridge Hospital, which of the following hospitals would be your first choice? (Please tick ONE box only)

1) Bishop Auckland General Hospital

2) Hexham General Hospital

3) Newcastle General Hospital

4) Newcastle Royal Victoria Infirmary (RVI)

5)Queen Elizabeth Hospital (Gateshead)

6) Sunderland Royal Infirmary

7) University Hospital of North Durham



Q4. What is your view on the future role of Shotley Bridge Hospital?

Collecting more views

This is a copy of a quick questionnaire designed to give us a picture of what people would like to see at the hospital and indicate whether it is still their first preference to use Shotley Bridge if possible.
This questionnaire is being circulated to the citizen's panel so please fill this in if you are a member of the panel!

Sadly this is not an all singing, all dancing website that allows you to fill in the form on-line but you may be able to copy and paste your way around that and send it through to us if you want to add your input.
In any event I'm sure we will get a response from the members of the panel and we will publish the figures on the site as soon as the forms are returned.We will then send them through to the Primary Care Trust and the consultants.

NEWS
JANUARY 4TH 2007 6.30PM
At the moment the Primary Care Trust are looking to organise a consultation day with members of the public, the numbers will be limited to around forty but if anyone would wish to be considered to join in with this more in depth exercise please e-mail our office at k.earley@derwentside.gov.uk in the meantime we will try to contact members of the citizen's panel to see if they might be interested in joining the session.

Some thoughts

To try and answer some of questions raised so far or just reflect on the issues, here are a few thoughts:
On the subject of what can we do?
One thing we can do is make sure that the consultants read all of the material from this site, so encourage others to come on and post their support. We realise not everyone has access to the internet but the more who do join in here the bigger the impression we can make.
All of these consultants Accountants?
Well just to prove it is a small world we discovered that one of the team ,who lives in the Manchester area is married to a girl from Blackhill who trained at Shotley Bridge to gain her SRN in the eighties! We also found out from the manager of this project, that her father was born in the maternity unit, so I think they understand how strongly everyone feels about the hospital.
convenient health care'
Owen Temple raises an issue here and we need more people to explain that for them convenient does not mean 'easy' but ease of access and its also about choice and quality of care. There are posts already that talk about how difficult travel is for some people but we need to really get this message across.
To take up Keith Little 's point
We should try and raise a list of what is available at Shotley Bridge and encourage people to use the hospital as their first choice if it has been suggested by their GP.

On the subject of history of the hospital ,here is a great piece of work by John Cavanagh

Local historian salvage story

As I had worked at Shotley Bridge General Hospital since it opened (over 40 years) as a hospital in the NHS, I decided to take some photographs of the empty buildings of the Main Block before they were demolished. I got permission and had a conducted tour of the empty buildings which I knew so well. It was quite eery and it was then that it occurred to me that there should be a memorial to the Hospital and especially to the staff who had worked there. Shotley Bridge General Hospital was well known throughout the medical world especially for its pioneering work in Chest and Heart Surgery and also the Plastic Surgery Unit for its treatment of Burns. The School of Nursing also had a record of Excellence for the quality of nurses who were trained there and went all over the world.
I decided that an excellent memorial would be the door lintle over the main entrance to the Administration Block which contained the date 1912, the year that the building was built as a Poor Law Institute for Mental patients. I asked the Demolition Contractors(O'Briens) for this and they kindly agreed to my request. It is the intention to incorporate the stones in some wall or feature in the centre of the estate to be planned, with a suitable plaque to the history of the Hospital and the many Staff who worked there.
Jack Cavanagh (Former Chief Medical Laboratory Scientific Officer in Pathology)