{"id":267843,"date":"2025-07-16T23:35:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-16T23:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/267843\/"},"modified":"2025-07-16T23:35:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T23:35:09","slug":"swah-minister-asks-health-trust-to-pause-hospital-consultation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/267843\/","title":{"rendered":"Swah: Minister asks health trust to pause hospital consultation"},"content":{"rendered":"

In June 2022 in a review of general surgery across Northern Ireland, the Health Department listed six key provisions that must be met to ensure that health trusts offered a safe service.<\/p>\n

These include providing a workforce, a process and protocols which deliver a safe service, as well as quality assurance to monitor and gauge the provision of services.<\/p>\n

Without all six in place, a hospital could not be expected to deliver emergency general surgery.<\/p>\n

Emergency general surgery was then temporarily suspended at Swah in December of that year.<\/p>\n

At the time, the Western Trust said the suspension was necessary to protect the public’s safety after it had problems recruiting surgical staff.<\/p>\n

At a trust board meeting at the start of July when the consultation was agreed to, the board was told it was”no longer possible to meet important safety standards at the Swah”.<\/p>\n

Campaigners said the loss of services and the distance and travel time, as well as poor transport infrastructure, put lives at risk.<\/p>\n

Neil Guckian, the chief executive of the Western Trust, told the board meeting it was “not a rushed decision”<\/a> and he understood the “strength of feeling” that this issue generates.<\/p>\n

“We have over two and a half years of working under these pathways, working effectively with no concerns on patient safety,” he added.<\/p>\n

Mr Guckian said evidence showed that patients who need to go to Altnagelvin Hospital “have better clinical outcomes” and “no patient has come to harm”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In June 2022 in a review of general surgery across Northern Ireland, the Health Department listed six key…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":267844,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4316],"tags":[105,4348,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-267843","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114865538627763436","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/267844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}