EAST Lancashire’s only accident and emergency unit has been suffering from a shortage of doctors, it has been revealed.

The A and E at the Royal Blackburn Hospital has been down to just 10 permanent staff doctors, instead of the 17 needed to fill the rota, health bosses at primary care trust NHS East Lancashire have said.

The hospital has been relying on temporary locum staff to fill in the gaps, but bosses there said more permanent staff had now been recruited, leaving the department now three doctors short.

The emergency department at Blackburn takes all East Lancashire’s seriously-ill patients who arrive by ambulance.

Nick Hayes, head of human resources for East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust, blamed the vacancies on a national shortage of middle-grade doctors.

He said: “East Lancashire Hospitals, along with other trusts up and down the country, needs to find alternative ways of ensuring its wards and departments are fully staffed.

“Initiatives we are using include employing locum doctors and looking further afield than the UK for new recruits, such as the European Community.”

The shortage was revealed at a board meeting of NHS East Lancashire, the comm-unity health body which provides funding for patients’ hospital treatment.

The primary care trust’s director of commissioning Cath Galaska said: “There are significant vacancies in the emergency department, and covering those vacancies with locums is simply not as efficient or effective as having permanent staff.

“It has meant a direct impact on performance in the department.”

The emergency department was closed for three hours one night last month after it was swamped with patients, and Mrs Galaska said it was “not practically possible” for the hospital trust to meet its annual government target for 98 per cent of A and E patients being seen within four hours.