I am petitioning to have our local A&E, ambulance station and maternity services reinstated at St Cross, Rugby. 

Rugby is always expanding and the residents of our town are tired of asking for adequate health care facilities to be made available.

Rugby is set to see 3 new schools and 5000 new homes this year which will increase the population even more so. 

There are ongoing issues with patient care due to the increase in demand for the services at UHCW having to accommodate to the neighbouring towns for maternity, ambulance services and a&e. 

UHCW A&E currently struggles consecutively with long patient wait times, seeing patients on end of life care or with illnesses that make them vulnerable left in the a&e waiting area for 15-16+ hours, newborn babies are also waiting for extremely lengthy periods despite being susceptible to illness and in a vulnerable state of health. 

There is also little distinction between patients that attend A&E who should be receiving emergency care who present very clearly very unwell whom are still left for unacceptable periods of time to wait for required treatment. 

The NHS Constitution states that at least 95% of A&E patients should be treated within four hours. However, in December 2022, the A&Es in Coventry and Warwickshire did not meet this target.  

This causes a rise of tension within the waiting area, increase in staff abuse or conflict with patience and a higher demand for security presence. 

The West Midlands Ambulance Service (WMAS) is the emergency ambulance service for Rugby and the surrounding area. WMAS responds to around 4,000 999 calls per day. 

The closure of the Rugby Community Ambulance Station has had residents of Rugby waiting for ambulances for up to five hours. 

The average person can only go without oxygen between four and six minutes before irreversible damage is done to the brain. 

The ETA from central Rugby to UCHW is 23 minutes should you need an ambulance.  

When my son was just 5 days old and we had returned from the hospital. We were at our home in Rugby and he was displaying signs of difficulty while breathing so I called an ambulance.  

We were told that it would be quicker for us to make our own way to hospital because the ambulances were very busy and they couldn't advise how long an ambulance would be. 

I was wrongly advised on the phone to take him to the a&e department at St Cross, Rugby for assistance, luckily I knew they didn't treat anybody under 5, I left my property and just as I was getting into the car the ambulance arrived. 

They checked his observations and they weren't normal so we were taken in by ambualnce to be seen at UHCW.

We were left to wait in a&e for hours and hours, I was still recovering from my surgery and myself and my partner were both exhausted. 

Had this been a life threatening incident the lack of availabile local ambulances, and I had not known I'd been given ncorrect advice alongside no available a&e service local without my quick actions this could have cost my son his life. 

Following on with the maternity service demand within Rugby. 

During 2022, 1149 women gave birth in Rugby.

The population of Rugby in 2022 was 114,400.

The population in Rugby 2023 was 118,781.
That's a 4381 increase in two years.  

The maternity wing at St Cross Hospital in Rugby was closed in 1997 due to a lack of births, with fewer than 1,000 births per year. 
The minimum number of births for a consultant-led service is generally considered to be around 2,500. 

Lucina Birth Centre at UHCW is regularly closed due to understaffing meaning some patients arrive and are declined from the birthing centre. 

This birthing centre offers a home from home experience and water birth options with quicker discharge should you have a straightforward, low risk birth. 

The maternity wards are regularly bed-blocked, some patients have to be transferred to other hospitals due to lack of space on the wards and staff are extremely stressed resulting in poor management.

The hospital isn't adequately staffed or managed well enough to safetly manage the workload of each patient.  

In 2022 UHCW was given a red rating due to baby death rates having more stillbirths and neonatal deaths per 1,000 births compared to similar services in 2020.  

They said: "As a Level 3 tertiary unit we receive referrals from all over the county for women, often with complex medical backgrounds, who require intensive and emergency care. 

We have been supporting an increase in requests from other maternity units to care for complex conditions including suspected fetal anomalies, enhanced maternal medicine needs and suspected pre-term births.  

During 2023 I had 3 occasions where these services would have been great use to me had they been situated within Rugby and more easily accessible. 

In April 2023 I gave birth to my son, Woody at UHCW.  

During this time I had no car, no means of transport and I had numerous instances of reduced movements which required hospital attendance. 

I had to rely on close family to be able to travel in emergencies for monitoring, scans, my induction, to bring my baby home, and to attend a&e in Coventry for any emergencies. 

Unfortunately there will be many people within Rugby who do not have close friends or relatives that they can rely for transport, this alongside the wait for ambulances due to the growing service demand puts many local people in our town at higher risk in an emergency. 

During my time in UHCW I had once incident within the hospital. 

I rang my my buzzer for the staff to come due to my child choking on his sick while laying down. I had just come up from an emergency c-section and I was not mobile but nobody came to help me.  

I had to drag myself to the side of my bed and lift my child out of the cot without the correct support that him and myself needed and I pulled my stitches. 

The staff did not check my incision, I was smirked at and they were very condescending.

The staff shrugged it off, asked very bluntly if I still needed them despite expressing my panic and concern and they blamed my partner for going outside to call our families.

I complained about the care and I was told the ward was short staffed hence my care being inadequate "not that it was an excuse". 

I was angry that this was the given reason as I had been scheduled in for an induction and told the staff they shouldn't book people in to be induced if they couldn't provide the correct care and manage the workload of all patients. 

If you have made it this far then thankyou for sticking with us! To conclude I do believe that by reinstating our services the following benefits will apply

• Lower ambulance wait times resulting in higher survival rates for cases of cardiac arrest, heart attack etc.

• Lower rates for still births and miscarriages as patients will be able to commute easier to recieve care and checkups and higher levels of care offered as staff won't be under so much pressure.

• Less patients facing traumatic births, feeling unsupported.

• Lower wait times and less strain on UHCW's A&E Department and for patients needing to attend a local A&E.

• An increase in job opportunities at St Cross, Rugby offering opportunities to those locally who are looking for employment and may be unable to commute or wish to work closer to home in a hospital setting.

• Less stress for patients and families not having to travel so far especially if they do not have access to transport.

• Happier staff due to facing less pressure and receiving better support from senior colleagues.