Coronavirus: 'Wales needs more intensive care staff to cope'

More intensive care staff and specialist doctors need to be recruited if Wales is to cope with coronavirus and beyond, a senior doctor said.

Bethan Gibson, deputy head of the training programme for intensive care in Wales, said the virus highlighted the lack of such staff.

"Before Covid there was a lack of intensive care beds in Wales already," she said.

The Welsh Government said critical care bed capacity had more than doubled.

It also said its emergency recruitment drive had signed up more than 2,000 people to return to the NHS to help during the crisis.

Dr Gibson, a consultant at Llantrisant's Royal Glamorgan Hospital, said not enough trainees were being recruited to deal with demand.

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"There's a lack of intensive care doctors and ITU [intensive therapy unit] nurses, and that was before Covid.

"I think this is highlighted how important intensive care is to the centre of the hospital and maybe we need more staff within these areas to help."

Dr Gibson added: "Currently in Wales every August we have new trainees appointed to the training programme and the minimum is five years for them to train to become an intensive care consultants - and all hospitals, every hospital, in Wales was lacking intensive care consultants anyway before the disease.

Nearly 900 staff have already completed critical care training, the Welsh Government said

"So we need to train more trainees to fill the gaps that were already there.

"And then we need to train even more trainees to fill the gaps that will be there because of Covid."

"We were looking at this prior to Covid, and looking at a business case to increase our training and numbers - we've got the training capacity - but it's the funding to go with it," Dr Gibson said.

"And obviously we would be very keen now in the light of Covid to increase it going forward," she said.

The Welsh Government also said 867 people have completed critical care training "specifically designed to support the Covid-19 response".