State Of The Art Hospital Ready To Open In Fermanagh

A brand new, state of the art, hospital will open its doors next week in Fermanagh.

The first new hospital to be built in Northern Ireland for more than a decade the new South West Acute hospital on Wolf Lough just north of Enniskillen, epitomises everything that is modern in a 21st century health service.

One feature of the £276m hospital is single ensuite rooms for every patient, the only facility able to offer such a feature in Northern Ireland.

There are no wards, just long corridors with 300 single side rooms. Each has its own flatscreen television, radio and clinical handwashing areas.

The new facility is about three times bigger than the old Erne hospital it replaces.

There will be an extra 18 nursing posts but nurses will have to go into individual rooms to look after patients as opposed to being across wards.

The Royal College of Nursing recognises that treating patients in single rooms helps maximise infection control, but is concerned that there are too few nurses for the new layout.

Garret Martin from the RCN said: "Three new wards have opened with only 18 full-time equivalent staff, that creates a challenge in terms of nursing staff being too thin on the ground."

(H)