NHS Grampian’s emergency care crisis deepened last night as it emerged a top consultant has quit his post.
Mark Mitchelson has told bosses at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary he will leave his job at the flagship hospital’s casualty department within weeks.
The troubled health board is already trying to fill three consultant vacancies in the accident and emergency department at ARI and recruit four middle-grade doctors to the unit.
Hundreds of senior clinicians have called for urgent improvements to NHS Grampian’s management, and health board chairman Bill Howatson quit his £32,000-a-year post earlier this month after three years in the job.
Dr Mitchelson, 38, an honorary lecturer in emergency medicine at Aberdeen University, raised his own concerns about staffing issues with the board in the summer.
He predicted gaps would appear in the 24/7 cover for emergency care, and that patient safety could be jeopardised as a result.
It is understood that Dr Mitchelson has been offered a new job in Northern Ireland and will start work there in January.
He declined to comment on his reasons for leaving when approached by the Press and Journal.
One colleague, who asked not to be named, said last night: “Mark is an excellent consultant. He was very involved in the development of the regional trauma centre.
“Clearly there is something not right when we are failing to retain our best, young surgeons. It also sends absolutely the wrong signal to our junior doctors.”
The Press and Journal revealed last week that the health board had received 625 complaints about staff shortages from its own workers in the past 12 months.
It is understood that consultants working in various disciplines across the hospital are being drafted-in to accident and emergency as cover and clinics are being cancelled as a result.
NHS Grampian has stressed that recruitment is ongoing and that the shortage of A&E consultants was a nationwide issue.
Of two international candidates offered jobs by NHS Grampian this summer, one has dropped out of the process and another is currently being registered with the General Medical Council.
North-east Labour MSP Richard Baker said: “Any further resignations from the accident and emergency department will be a significant blow.
“NHS Grampian have worked hard to fill vacancies but the departure of a further consultant will obviously add further pressures to an incredibly pressurised situation.
“People make a decision to move on for all sorts of reasons, but we know that staff morale is being affected by staff shortages.”
Mr Baker said he was writing to the Auditor General to request a review of recruitment at NHS Grampian and how it has been affected by Scottish Government policies and funding.
The health board’s outgoing medical director, Dr Roelf Dijkhuizen, recently told MSPs at Holyrood that the health board had been shortchanged by £1billion over the past 10 years because of changes to the way funding is allocated.
North-east Labour MSP Lewis Macdonald said: “Because of understaffing at NHS Grampian and across Scotland, you have highly trained specialists in areas such as resuscitation and trauma, they end up triaging minor accidents and injuries.
“It is little wonder it is so hard to recruit and retain consultants.
“It is a sorry situation and clearly it is the patient who will suffer.”
A British Medical Association Scotland spokeswoman said doctors in accident and emergency at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary had been coping with “unsustainable workloads” to maintain a service in the face of a continued staffing crisis.
She said: “The board and Scottish Government must work together effectively and immediately with clinicians to resolve the issues that are threatening services in Aberdeen.
“There is increasing evidence of a Scotland-wide consultant recruitment and retention crisis in hospitals. We urgently need accurate and robust workforce data to understand the scale of the problem.
“The NHS in Scotland needs to be an attractive place for consultants to work. Both NHS employers and the Scottish Government need to work with doctors at local and national level to consider how to make services sustainable in the immediate future and in the long term, and how to make jobs attractive to doctors considering coming to live and work in Scotland.”
The closing date for applications for the three vacant A&E consultant posts is Friday.
A spokeswoman for NHS Grampian said: “We cannot comment on individual staffing matters. People move around for a variety of reasons, not least of all career progression or to suit personal circumstances.”
The health board has already committed to a £2million remodelling of A&E services to improve the flow of patients through the department and to hive-off those who need less critical care.