A CHILDREN’S unit which has been closed to overnight admissions for a year and a half will renew its full-time services for four nights a week.
The 14-bed children’s ward at St John’s Hospital in Livingston will reopen on a 24-hour basis from Monday to Thursday from March 18.
Meanwhile, hospital bosses have committed to fully reinstating the 24/7 paediatric service from October.
Announcing the move, Health Secretary Jeane Freeman said she was “acutely aware of how important the reinstatement of the full inpatient service is to the local community”.
She said: "I believe NHS Lothian's decision to reopen the paediatric ward for 24 hours, four nights Monday to Thursday is welcome and I hope provides assurance to members and families that full reinstatement of the inpatient service is on track to happen in October.
"The board’s chief executive has sought to assure me that reinstatement of the full 24/7 paediatric service has the full commitment of the board and will continue to receive the highest level of priority.
"As I said in September, that too is, and remains, my commitment. We will continue to act, as we have done, to provide assistance and support to the board, monitor progress and work to deliver 24/7 paediatric inpatient services at St John’s from October this year.
“That remains my commitment and I hope members see the progress to date as further assurance of that."
The children’s ward is currently open from 8am to 8pm seven days a week, providing short-stay paediatric assessment services, day surgery, planned day case procedures and programmed investigations.
Ms Freeman said these limited opening hours would remain in place from Friday to Sunday.
It comes after services were cut back amid ongoing staff shortages, with NHS Lothian struggling to recruit the number of paediatric consultants needed to safely provide round-the-clock care.
The health board shut the unit to inpatient admissions on July 7, 2017, marking the third such closure in five years.
Ms Freeman said an average of 1.6 children a day have been transferred from St John’s to Edinburgh’s Royal Hospital for Sick Children over the last 18 months.
She said moving to a 24-hour operation for four nights a week would boost recruitment efforts as it demonstrated the board’s commitment to fully reinstating services.
But Scottish Tory shadow health secretary Miles Briggs said services had now been removed on three separate occasions – in 2012, 2015 and 2017.
He added: "Local families across West Lothian will rightly be cynical about the latest SNP promises."
Dr Tracey Gillies, medical director at NHS Lothian, said: "We are really pleased that we are able to reinstate children's inpatient services for four nights of the week in St John's Hospital.
"We have always said that we could only restore the full service when it was safe and sustainable to do so, and that has been our priority throughout.
"We have conducted rigorous assessments of the new model and we know it will be able to support this short-term approach, until the new members of the team are able to take up their roles in the autumn, which will allow us to fully re-open 24/7 seven days a week."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here