Health bosses say there's no guarantee Leek Minor Injuries Unit won't face future temporary closures, as the NHS battles staff shortages and recruitment challenges.

The minor-injuries unit in Leek is a nurse-led, walk-in service and is open from 9am-5pm every day.

It provides treatment for minor illnesses and injuries – including wounds needing stitches, ear infections, sprains and strains, suspected broken limbs plus bites and stings as well as minor head injuries and minor burns.

Bosses decided to temporarily close the unit in March 2020 due to staffing pressures and the need for the health service to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic.

In June 2021, the unit re-opened again, albeit with reduced hours from it's previous opening hours of 8am-8pm daily.

The minor injuries has also been temporarily closed twice this year – first in March, when it was closed for two weeks due to a Covid-19 outbreak among staff, and then for one week earlier this month for the same reason.

The most recent outbreak saw 19 out of the unit's 44 staff off work due to Covid-19.

Operations director Lisa Agell said: "In terms of the suspensions of service, obviously these decisions were not taken lightly. They were made in response to severe staffing pressures.

"The workforce that supports both the Haywood Walk-in Centre and the Leek Minor Injuries Unit are one workforce, that work across the two sites. It's a very highly specialised skillset of nurses."

She added: "We are in the process of training up additional staff but the training for these nurse practitioners is at least a two-year programme.

"There are very few of these nurses across the country."

An additional ten members of staff have been recruited to cover the two sites, and some staff have been moved over from Royal Stoke Hospital's emergency department – although bosses cautioned this is likely to have had an impact on the services there.

They've also established a programme to develop registered nurses into becoming emergency care practitioners.

Ms Agell said: "None of this is an immediate fix for some of the workforce challenges we're facing across emergency care."

The minor injuries unit and walk-in centre currently have seven vacancies for registered nurses. A full complement of staff would see the two sites share a pool of 34 nurses, meaning there is currently a 20% vacancy rate.

Chief nurse Liz Lockett said: "Vacancy rates are increasing, they are higher than they were pre-pandemic.

"We've got an ageing workforce, we've got a number of practitioners who are retiring.

"While we are looking at a number of different opportunities to recruit, grow our own staff and international recruitment.

"At the moment, because of the three years to get through training we do have a higher vacancy rate than we had pre-pandemic.

"We're also finding it more challenging to fill our shifts with bank and agency [staff] as other employers are offering a higher wage than we do in the NHS.

"We're all fishing in the same pond for a limited resource of staff."

Cllr Pam Wood said: "I know a few nurses who are looking at getting a job filling shelves in a supermarket because it'll probably be more lucrative than working for the NHS now."

She asked if there could be any guarantee that current staff training would mean the minor injuries unit can remain open.

Ms Lockett replied: "I don't think we could ever sit here and give you a 100% guarantee that we wouldn't close a service.

"The workforce is across the urgent care pathway and we have had significant problems with staffing – both in terms of recruitment and retention, but also in terms of Covid-19 outbreaks.

"We don't want to put patients at risk by staff passing on Covid-19 infections.

"My role as chief nurse holds with it accountability for safety.

"Safety is paramount, and if we couldn't operate safely, and we were putting people at risk, we couldn't guarantee we wouldn't take that decision in the future."