Patients to be moved over safety concerns

PATIENTS and staff at a community hospital ward in Swansea will move to a larger hospital seven miles away in a bid to address longstanding safety and workforce concerns.

- RICHARD YOULE

Gorseinon Hospital

(RICHARD YOULE)

The temporary relocation of Gorseinon Hospital's West Ward to Ward 3 at Singleton Hospital, Sketty, will be from October to next March.

Leaders at Swansea Bay University Health Board, which runs both hospitals, agreed to plan for the move earlier this month and then confirmed the transition at a meeting on Thursday.

A board report said "significant and repeated" concerns have been raised by West Ward staff since February this year and that staff shortages were such that sometimes half of those working there were agency or hospital bank staff. The concerns, it said, included patient and staff safety, workforce skills mix, the ward's isolation and "inconsistent management and leadership".

West Ward provides "step-down" beds for people from Swansea and Neath Port Talbot who can leave an acute setting but aren't ready yet to go home.