Closure of Poole Hospital ward is "tragic", says patient (From Bournemouth Echo)

Closure of Poole Hospital ward is "tragic", says patient

10:00am Tuesday 1st January 2013 in News By Juliette Astrup

Andrew Purnell on Cranborne Ward at Poole Hospital

A POOLE Hospital patient has spoken of his dismay that a medical ward will close tomorrow.

Cranborne Ward is set to close, with patients and staff being dispersed into other wards of the hospital.

Long term patient Andrew Purnell has spoken of his regret at the loss of an “amazing” ward and the disbanding of its caring community of staff.

Andrew, a developer from Broadstone, has diabetes and underwent a heart bypass. He has been in and out of the ward for three years.

He told the Echo: “The staff here are absolutely fantastic and make a real effort with all the patients.

“They really work as hard as they can – doing extra hours unpaid if needed. They are absolutely lovely.

“It is a specialist team – but the specialist nurses are being deployed on other wards and a few have said they’re moving to Bournemouth. We are losing great staff and it just seems tragic to me.

“When you’ve got something really lovely that really works – from an outside point of view, why change a system when it’s working?”

A spokesman for the hospital said: “As part of a reconfiguration of medical beds which will better concentrate our medical wards, increase access to day treatments, cubicles and en suite facilities, Cranborne Ward at Poole Hospital is due to close on January 2 and its work will transfer into a new ward area.

“From this date, medical patients will be focused in a more compact area, in wards which already care for general and specialist medical patient and there will be no service reduction as part of these changes.

“Staff members have worked with managers to implement a more intelligent layout of services, which will see our medical patients benefit from an increase of 58 to 63 medical beds.

“This is a very positive move for our medical patients, which we hope will improve the quality of care and patient experience.”