‘Trainee doctors too scared to come to work’

That is the headline of a damning news story by the BBC’s Welsh Health Correspondent. The story describes a report by the Royal College of Physicians following a visit to the newly opened Grange Hospital in Cwmbran. You can read the story here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-58967159 .

Junior doctors described facing numerous problems trying to make the Health Board’s model of care work. Many of the problems sound eerily similar to those we can expect to see with the New Velindre Cancer Centre.

We would like to make clear our gratitude to all Velindre’s staff, and we want everyone to be absolutely clear that we support these key workers and the service they provide. 

We make many criticisms of ‘Velindre’ in our blogs, and we want to emphasise that these criticisms are NOT directed at frontline staff. 

Our scientifically validated criticism is directed solely at the inner groupthink team that has advanced a calamitous project for cancer care in South East Wales. Those who are driving forward the development of a new, stand-alone Cancer Centre on a site several miles from an acute hospital. We call these people ‘New Velindre leaders’.

We are aware of accusations that we are in some way ‘anti-cancer treatment’, ‘nimby’ or ‘unsupportive’, and we have written this especially to refute these views. 

We emphasise again our huge gratitude to the staff for the care they provide at the existing Velindre.

Let’s not forget fantastic NHS Staff

At this time of austerity, uncertainty and challenge, it’s easy to overlook those who turn up daily and keep the world ticking over. Alarmist news headlines come and go- we may be relying on the army to drive ambulances. But let’s remember the hundreds of paramedics and ambulance drivers who turn up every day and go over and above each shift. They forgo breaks, finish late and often sit outside hospitals in a van, waiting. NOT doing the job they trained to do. NOT doing what gives them purpose in their work.

It isn’t just the ambulance service

Elective surgery is experiencing unparalleled delay, but let’s not forget the teams who continue to do the best for patients in this taxing environment- dealing with emergencies and fighting with their organisations to admit patients for interventions.

Intensive Care Units are full. Doctors are covering nursing shifts.

Critically ill patients may be transferred between sites to accommodate demand across networks. But people are doing their best.

We are pleased to announce that Co-locate Velindre is now also on Twitter. We’re providing comment and scrutiny around the issues of co-located vs stand- alone cancer centres.

‘passionate about world class care in the safest location. Truth, evidence, transparency, engagement, quality, safety.’

follow us on @colvelindre

Groupthink

In Part One of this blog, https://colocate-velindre.co.uk/is-the-new-velindre-team-incurably-out-of-touch/we described features of the New Velindre leadership group up to Autumn 2020 resembling the social behaviour known as Groupthink.

What happened next?

The external response at the time was increased clinicians’ pressure against the plans alongside the progress of a popular petition to Senedd in the same strain. Consequently the ‘Nuffield Advice’ was arranged, a contract between Velindre Board and the Nuffield Trust, and announced October 1^st.

Unfortunately the Nuffield advice was immediately peddled as an Independent Clinical Review – in particular on the website of the one Member of Senedd closest and most sympathetic to the New Velindre scheme, namely Julie Morgan MS for North Cardiff.

Alongside the impassioned, drawn out legal fight that has been making local headlines recently, (https://colocate-velindre.co.uk/ms-lewiss-judicial-review-heres-what-you-wont-know/) the clinical fight to be heard continues unfettered.

Clinicians are speaking out

Despite a local clinician going public on Welsh television, there has been an eerie silence from Velindre. They have made no effort to either acknowledge or challenge the damning claims: that the new model of care does not, and can not, guarantee the safety of deteriorating patient on a stand-alone site without its own dedicated transport service.

Sadly, and not without irony, the broadcast went live on the same day the ambulance service acknowledged they were relying on the army to help them with unprecedented demand.

We know that money is tight in NHS Wales- we see the effects every day, after all. Welsh Government faces tough decisions every day. These decisions directly affect the care NHS staff can provide, and the pay they receive for their efforts.

‘Magic Money’

Take nurse pay, for example. Welsh Government has offered a 3% pay rise. This is a pay cut in real terms. Mark Drakeford himself agrees that nurses deserve more, but the cash could only be found ‘from doing even less’ to provide services.

Our NHS is already facing huge challenges ensuring safe staffing levels on wards. The cost of agency nurses to cover staffing vacancies is spiralling. In at least one Welsh hospital, Consultants are being taken away from their own specialist work to cover nursing shifts. Unsurprisingly, morale is plummeting.

Yesterday’s BBC article (Mon 4th Oct 21) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-58769347 again raises the shortage of cancer specialists in Wales.

As Winston S Churchill wrote in the Hinge of Fate in 1950, there is no worse mistake in public leadership than to hold out false hopes soon to be swept away.

The Royal College of Radiologists represents clinical oncologists and diagnostic radiologists, and has been active for years in collecting and publishing workforce data.

We at Co-locate Velindre congratulate both Richard Pugh, Head of Macmillan in Wales and Dr Seema Arif, Consultant Oncologist at Velindre Oncology Centre for highlighting the growing number of terminally ill people accessing end-of-life benefits. In today’s BBC article https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-58769347  they report a “20% year-on-year increase in application forms for people who have less than six months to live”.

‘To co-locate or not to co-locate’. As far as Velindre is concerned this Hamlet-like
question does not arise.  The New Velindre Team has claimed that Velindre is a
successful brand, that it should continue to be on a separate site away from other
services, and that its Team answers to no-one regarding the choice of underpinning clinical model except the Welsh Minister of Health. This group tendency is widely known as groupthink. It occurs when a group ignores problems and challenges from outsiders, exaggerates its own abilities in decision-making and underrates its opponents.

Update! Following yesterday’s piece on Cat Lewis’s Judicial Review, here’s the latest. Media coverage, especially the less friendly, is still boosting her cause. Over £2,000 donated in three days now. And support rising as November 17th is set for an oral hearing of the application.

A news report with unsympathetic asides on Ms Lewis’s Judicial Review yesterday has succeeded in galvanising her supporters in and beyond the community. Donations poured into her appeal all day reaching nearly a thousand pounds by evening with many donors choosing to remain anonymous.