Daily Record reporters have been at the forefront of exposing the ongoing scandal at Glasgow’s flagship Queen Elizabeth University Hospital.
But even hardened journalists were shocked at the conclusions of a review into maternity services at the troubled facility, published yesterday.
Staff shortages and a lack of space led to chaos, says Health Improvement Scotland. Women who needed to be induced sometimes endured waits of 190 hours – that’s almost eight days.
Such waits while expectant mums were worried about their babies and in extreme pain are unimaginable.
There were also lengthy waits for women ready to deliver their baby – but there was no room in the labour wards.
During an inspection by the health watchdog, burned-out midwives were refused breaks due to a lack of staff to cover for them. And there was a “disconnect” with management, who were ignorant of the chaos on the wards.
None of this is acceptable in a modern Scottish hospital. But it gets worse.
Today we also report on the experience of Rawan and Mohammed Hameed, who watched their daughter Leyan pass away just eight days after she was born.
Rawan had a trouble-free pregnancy but she and her husband believe chaos at the hospital contributed to her death.
They call it murder.
It’s clear that failings at the hospital need to be fixed. The maternity unit appears to be too small to cope with demand. The number of midwives on duty can’t cope with the constant pressures placed on them.
This comes on top of already known problems with the safety of the water supply at the hospital, which led to a major inquiry after a series of deaths.
It is a shambles.
New Health Secretary Angela Constance has a lot of serious problems in her in-tray. But the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital needs some immediate attention.
The Scottish Government is entitled, where necessary, to put health boards under so-called “special measures” – where specific improvements are demanded and measured.
This happened in Glasgow between 2019 and 2022. It could be time to return to this system.
At the very least, those who run Glasgow’s creaking NHS services must be told to get a grip – or ship out.
We report today how a keeper at Edinburgh Zoo lost her job because she couldn’t tell the monkeys apart.
You might have thought that was a pretty basic part of the job.
But in modern Scotland anything goes.
However, rumours that the keeper in question has landed a job as the SNP’s new accountant are, we believe, untrue.
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