As weather in the UK reached near-arctic temperatures during the first weeks of the New Year, radiology departments found themselves battling against staff shortages and increased accident and emergency cases.
In West Cumbria temperatures fell to -19˚ and heavy snow caused chaos, making routes into the hospitals treacherous. Jean Grubb, professional lead for radiology at North Cumbria University Hospitals Trust, said: "This was the last thing we needed as the recent flooding continues to cause problems for staff travelling to and from work."
Most managed to battle through the dangerous conditions but the 100% increase in workload for the orthopaedic department had a huge impact on radiography with double theatre lists working long hours.
"The ambulance service was also badly affected but we were lucky that the majority of radiology patients managed to keep their appointments," said Jean.
Some radiotherapy services were not so fortunate. Christine Richards, radiotherapy services manager at Kent Oncology Centre, described the situation as “a nightmare” as she struggles to clear the backlog of patients.
“We had no ambulance service so we had to cancel all non emergency transport patients,” she explained. “We’re now booked to full capacity and with more patients to add on, I’ve had to ask staff to work additional hours. That means paying overtime which will be expensive but we can’t give time off in lieu as we do not have enough staff.”
The service was already overstretched with some machines working from 8am to 8pm before Christmas, but with an additional treatment unit going clinical Christine had been planning to change to single shifts in the New Year.
“I made the decision to reduce the number of agency staff because I thought we would have enough resources,” she said. “We’ll manage but it’s going to be a tough few weeks.”
Christine praised staff for their commitment, in particular the schedulers who have had the near-impossible task of reorganising the appointments list. "We're all pulling together to minimise the disruption," she said.
