A&E name change is a good move

11:32am Friday 11th April 2008

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I'VE probably campaigned more than anyone about cuts to hospital services in south Bucks over the last few years, but I have no particular gripe about the change of name of Wycombe's A&E department.

The unit's title was altered on Monday to the Emergency Medical Centre to better reflect what it offers the public.

As I've said in this column before, I actually believe this rebranding is a good move.

No. I haven't defected to the other side and started supporting NHS reconfigurations and massive centralisations.

This name change is a good thing for Wycombe because it more accurately reflects the service on offer at the hospital.

A&E was a misnomer ever since the emergency trauma part of the service was relocated to Stoke Mandeville in Aylesbury three years ago.

That relocation means that anyone seriously injured, but not about to die imminently, will be taken by ambulance to Aylesbury - even if they are lying outside the gates of Wycombe Hospital.

This gave truth to the myth for many people that A&E had closed at Wycombe, and I can't count the number of readers who wrote in innocently claiming that had happened.

But the A&E, to the best of my knowledge, has always still offered the majority of services it used to before the trauma move.

I've used A&E about six times over a number of years for minor injuries and emergencies and, in every single case, the unit we have now would be able to cope with my needs.

What it doesn't deal with, though, is serious injuries, broken bones and stomach pains, and that's where the confusion crept in.

I still believe it was wholly wrong to move trauma out of Wycombe three years ago. It's a decision this community will live to regret. But now that's happened, it's only right and proper the unit should be renamed.

The other positive aspect about the name change is that it may focus the attention of local people on just what they have lost.

I hate to say it, but I reckon there are still loads of residents out there with their head in the sand about the NHS. I bet there are thousands who aren't even aware anything is different and who will therefore think this name change is akin to an NHS apocalypse.

I bet there are also legions of people who don't realise that, by the end of this year, the majority of Wycombe's birthing services will have been shunted up to Aylesbury.

It will only be when they go to have a baby next year that it will dawn on them that their local hospital doesn't offer that particular service any longer. That's unless they are among the minority of women lucky enough to only need a midwife-assisted birth.

And then, despite the hundreds of stories we've written in the Bucks Free Press, they will turn on us and say: "Why did no one tell us?"

You think I'm having a laugh? Just wait and see.