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CONCERNED ... nurse Richard Watkins fears that the loss of services will lead to the death of patients.
Infirmary nurse tells TV show his fears over A&E downgrade
30/10/2007
CONTROVERSIAL changes to key services at Rochdale Infirmary came under fire in ITV’s ‘Tonight with Trevor McDonald’ programme on Monday.
Richard Watkins, a nurse who has worked at the hospital for the last seven years, warned that the move to downgrade accident and emergency services at the hospital may lead to an increased number of deaths.
He said he fears that longer ambulance journeys to Oldham or Manchester for critically ill Rochdale patients will have disastrous consequences.
He said: "Someone is going to die because they’ve got to go that bit further down the road to get treated.
"Even if it’s one person, someone’s going to lose a loved one and the reason I’m saying this is because it isn’t going to be the people that made the decision to downgrade this hospital service who have to tell that family that their loved one didn’t have the right address.
"The people who are going to have to do it are the people that are left behind.
"That’s going to be nurses and doctors or, God forbid, a paramedic having to explain why the person died in the back of an ambulance on the way to somewhere else."
He added: "I’ve not been able to find anybody who thinks that it’s a good idea to downgrade this department and to lose the service here."
There is also concern that paramedics will not be available in every ambulance responding to an emergency.
In the programme, Dr Michael Finnegan, an associate medical director for the Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs the Infirmary, was unable to say how many paramedics were located in the region.
And the North West Ambulance Service confirmed in writing to the programme that there was no guarantee of a paramedic being on every ambulance.
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1/11/2007 at 16:53