HOSPITALS trust boss Tony Halsall yesterday refused to step down despite admitting his job had become ‘very uncomfortable’.

The beleaguered chief executive called a crisis meeting with consultants yesterday, which was still going on into the evening.

In an exclusive interview with The Westmorland Gazette before that meeting he accepted staff and patients were angry with the state of the organisation, which is struggling under criticism from health watchdog the Care Quality Commission and inside critics.

However, Mr Halsall said he was determined to keep the board of directors in place to sort out the trust’s problems.

He said: “I’ve got patients and staff who are angry because we’ve set high standards and of course people will be upset when we miss them.

“When things are going wrong we all take it personally.

"The midwives in our trust - especially those at Furness General Hospital - have taken it especially personally at the moment.

“I’ve been working in the health service for 30 years and I feel equally upset when things go wrong.”

Mr Halsall said he was concentrating his efforts on future plans for the trust and improvements to the five sites it operates.

These are FGH in Barrow, Kendal’s Westmorland General Hospital, Royal Lancaster Infirmary, Morecambe’s Queen Victoria Hospital, and Ulverston Community Health Centre.

He said: “There may be people who are angry but I still have to make my main focus on putting things right and making sure we change our system so problems don’t reoccur.

“Because of outpatient appointment problems we’ve got a back log of work but our consultants are working hard to clear them.

“We need clear targets and deadlines. The trust has brought in external staff to work alongside our clinical teams and we want to embrace a huge programme of change.”

In response to comments from an anonymous consultant who criticised the board in last week’s The Westmorland Gazette, Mr Halsall defended colleagues who he said worked hard to listen to staff concerns.

He said: “It’s extremely difficult to accept the culture here is wrong, but going forward if people feel frustrated then we have to take that on board as a criticism.

“We have people spread over five different sites. To keep them feeling like we’re really listening to them is really challenging.

“We have to consider an easy way to allow people to talk anonymously and we have been training staff to use systems where they can do this and communicate feedback and any problems.”

Mr Halsall said the trust had faced pressures from central government changes and cutbacks, but said it took full responsibility for its own local failings.

“It’s been an extremely difficult time for health boards nationally. But we wouldn’t use these stresses to excuse the issues we’ve got locally.”

He said: “The public expect us to say we’re sorry, to show what we’re going to do about this - but they don’t want to see us walk away.

“In my view it would be unhelpful for senior people to walk out at a time when we have to be completely focused.

“I could take myself out of this dispute and go and do something else - something easier - but that’s not what I want.

“I love my job. At the moment, it’s very uncomfortable but I won’t walk away. No one is going to be resigning.”