Campaigners praised a public workshop held to discuss plans to reinstate a consultant-led maternity service at an Elgin hospital as a “positive step” forward yesterday.
It was one of three events due to take place in the town to explore ways that the health board can tackle staffing issues that have affected women and children’s services at Dr Gray’s Hospital.
The department was recently downgraded to a midwife-led maternity service forcing high risk pregnancy mums who need consultant care while giving birth to travel to Aberdeen or Inverness.
Workshops have been organised to give the public the chance to generate ideas and give feedback to help NHS Grampian come up with an action plan to maintain paediatric and obstetric services in the region.
Health secretary Jeane Freeman has called on NHS Grampian to come up with a detailed plan of its proposals to restore the service by Friday.
Campaign group Keep Mum, which aims to get a full service back in place as soon as possible, praised the workshop, which was held on Saturday, for being “positive.”
A spokeswoman for the group said: “It was positive with some great ideas for the medium and long-term.
“The Keep Mum message and also from local mums there, was to keep the pressure on for immediate actions to review and publicise the services that can be done at Dr Grays.”
Keep Mum has previously called on Dr Gray’s to allow the obstetricians currently employed at the hospital to still be allowed to consult on pregnancies in Elgin.
The spokeswoman added: “We reiterated that the obstetricians in Elgin should be given responsibility to do this rather than Aberdeen as all four obstetricians are currently still on call at Dr Grays. There is no plan to change that which is reassuring.
“Yes there is work that will be done to bring our maternity and paediatric services into the 21st Century and Keep Mum will remain involved but we continue to push for immediate changes.”
Two further workshops still to take place in Elgin will be held on Tuesday and Thursday from 6.30pm till 8pm at Moray College’s Alexander Graham Bell Centre for Digital Health.
Alasdair Pattinson, General Manager for Dr Gray’s Hospital, said: “We were pleased with the number of people who came along to the first workshop on Saturday and with the constructive discussions and the number of suggestions people had.
“The development of the action plan continues to gather pace and we will be holding a further session on Tuesday night to discuss progress with it.
“I’d encourage anyone who wants to be involved to come along tomorrow or on Thursday – it doesn’t matter if you weren’t able to join us on Saturday, it’s important we hear from as wide a range of people as possible.”