Manx Care, the healthcare body set up at arms-length from the government, has marked its one year anniversary.

Chief executive Teresa Cope said that the mood was however ‘very sombre’, with the milestone coming as the hospital looked after a record number of Covid patients – 28 (though some are being treated for things other than Covid).

There is also ‘a large number of staff off sick’, she highlighted.

‘It honestly doesn’t seem a year ago that Manx Care began life, yet similarly it feels like we’ve been in existence for so much longer than that due to the sheer volume of what we’ve dealt with and achieved in that time,’ Mrs Cope said.

She went on to lay out the key ‘highlights and challenges’ faced by Manx Care across the last year.

First noted was how a number of colleagues had described Covid as both the organisation’s ‘biggest successes and yet similarly one of our biggest challenges’.

Mrs Cope explained: ‘Covid has impacted Manx Care in terms of our people and our services in an unprecedented way, yet across the last year we’ve broadly maintained the delivery of our services despite the fact that, at times, we’ve experienced a staff sickness rate in excess of 15%.

‘For example, we successfully delivered two of our school-based vaccination programmes for flu and HPV, kept the blood clinic open and continued to deliver the ARMD (Age Related Macular Degeneration) injection programme.’

She also noted the ‘strong relationships’ with other providers that had been developed as a result of Covid, such as the Cheshire and Merseyside Critical Care Network which supported Manx Care in treating some of the most seriously ill – including flying specialist critical care staff to the island.

Pathology statistics were also highlighted for between April 1, 2021 and March 29, 2022.

One hundred and fifteen thousand Covid tests results were gathered in this period, compared to 45,000 in the prior 12 months.

With the lab also carrying out 500 other types of tests, in the past year it has carried out 362,000 non-Covid tests.

Mrs Cope then talked about the staffing issues which had lead to Manx Care taking the ‘very difficult decision’ to pause elective surgeries last year.

She explained: ‘Across the British Isles there’s an estimated shortage of around 10,000 doctors and 40,000 nurses – and the island is competing with NHS Trusts across the UK for the same small group of colleagues.

‘Additionally, there are severe shortages in a number of specialist areas – what you might hear us refer to as “hard to recruit posts”.

‘All health and social care systems are desperately trying to restore and recover their services after Covid, and so the demand for health and social care staff has never been as high.’

Mrs Cope said that a positive note was Manx Care being able to welcome a number of new nurses from India, Nigeria, Ghana, Malawi and Lesotho through Manx Care’s relationship with a new recruitment agency, GTEC.

She pointed out that all the nurses who just graduated here were able to get jobs in the island, with Manx Care looking to increase the number of nurse training places in the island which are offered through the Keyll Darree centre.