Safe and Sustainable, a brief guide.

Some of you may be aware of the furore in the national and regional press surrounding the review of children's heart surgery. Headlines have included *Bitter blow to future of children's cardiac unit at Southampton General Hospital and **One in three children's heart units to close as surgeons are 'spread too thinly'
Parents of 'heart' children are particularly worried about how their services might be effected, however many GUCH patients are also confused and concerned. 'If children's centres close will GUCH Units close too?' I don't understand where has all this come from? 'What is GUCH Patients Association doing about this? 'Maybe I should write to my MP or start a petition.

To help answer these questions and others that you may have we have produced our own mini guide to Safe and Sustainable below.

Safe and Sustainable A brief guide

What is Safe and Sustainable?


Sir Ian Kennedy published Learning from Bristol, The Report of the Public Inquiry into children's heart surgery at the Bristol Royal Infirmary 1984-1995, in 2001. Tragically many babies died unnecessarily due to lack of communication, teamwork, leadership and poor hospital care. The report made many recommendations, including suggesting that children's heart surgery should be concentrated in fewer larger centres.

Ten years after this recommendation was first made the Joint Committee of Primary Care Trusts (JCPCT) suggested that to ensure services are 'safe' and 'sustainable' four or five of the 11 existing paediatric centers should stop carrying out surgery.

Which hospitals are affected?

Hospitals which will lose children's heart surgery will be selected from a list which includes the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle, Leeds General Infirmary, Glenfield (Leicester), Southampton General Hospital, Oxford Radcliffe and the Royal Brompton in London. it has yet to be decided which of these hospitals will retain services and which ones will no longer operate on children.

Services are likely to be expanded at Alder Hey (Liverpool) Birmingham and Bristol Children's Hospitals and in London Guys and Great Ormond Street.

But I am an adult patient, not a child, what's this got to do with me?

Although there are separate paediatric cardiologists and GUCH cardiologists there are no separate children's surgeons and adult surgeons. This means that the same surgeon will operate on both children and adults. In simple terms then, if centres lose childrens surgeons they will also loose adult surgeons as they are one and the same people.

As GUCH services are bound to be affected, then the experts undertaking the review must have already taken this into account?

No. Unfortunately despite the best efforts of GUCH Patients Association and many professionals working in GUCH medicine this review has been undertaken without having taken into account the needs for GUCH services.

What is GUCH Patients Association doing about this then?

We are going to use the period of consultation over the next 4 months to consider how the changes will affect GUCH services and make representations and alternative proposals. We are obviously going to look into this very carefully and are not able to get into positions of being seen to support single centres but to put forward a proposal for a national service.

It would be wrong to think that the current position is that all GUCH surgery is being performed in appropriate places and therefore whilst we need to do whatever we can to ensure we get the GUCH service the country needs and to influence the proposals, the outcome should also reduce and hopefully eliminate occasional or inappropriate practices in GUCH surgery

Should I start a petition, write to my MP or chain myself to the railings outside the House of Commons?

The report into the Bristol heart tragedy recognised the need for professionals to listen to patients and for patients to be involved in planning services. Here at GUCH PA we always encourage patients to have a voice. At the moment though nothing has been decided. You can still have your say. The link below gives more information about Safe and Sustainable and helps you to become involved in the public consultation.

http://www.specialisedservices.nhs.uk/safeandsustainable

As for petitions and writing to your MP, you are of course entitled to do either of these; however it might be better to wait until the situation is clearer, before deciding what to do next.

Finally we don't recommend anyone ties themselves to railings, outside the Commons or anywhere else, frankly it's far too cold!

*This is Hampshire 16 Feb 2011
**Daily Mail 16 Feb 2011