‘I’ll miss Hull, its people & my inspirational colleagues’: Hospitals chief Chris Long retires
STEPPING DOWN: Chris Long, chief executive of Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. Picture by Tom Arran Commercial Photography
By Simon Bristow
The chief executive of Hull’s hospitals trust has paid tribute to his “fantastic” colleagues as he prepares to retire after 32 years in the NHS.
Chris Long will step down from his role on Thursday, August 10, after a distinguished career in public service, the last nine of which have been as chief executive of Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs Hull Royal Infirmary and Castle Hill Hospital.
He previously served for 12 years in the Army, and was a Captain in the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, serving in the First Gulf War and Northern Ireland during The Troubles.
Asked what he had learned about his colleagues over the last decade, Mr Long said: “They are just fantastic. They are so committed to doing their best for their patients. They are so professional and disciplined, and I think one of the overriding lessons is just how complex a big hospital like this [HRI] is, and how many moving parts you’ve got in it.
“The are a number of staff who we never see or never talk about but without them the whole place would collapse tomorrow. And they’re all working in this really complicated team just keeping things going. You know, the dear old tower block over there is fifty-plus years old, sixty years old, you’ve got several iterations of it in there, and I’ve got a team of engineers, a team of plumbers, all sorts of skills [working there], and if they weren’t doing everything they do it would just stop and we can’t afford that.”
‘I WILL MISS THE PEOPLE I WORK WITH ENORMOUSLY’: Chris Long. Picture by Tom Arran Commercial Photography
Mr Long was speaking in his office on the vast infirmary site on the first morning of a 48-hour strike by hospital consultants, the latest in a series of recent stoppages by NHS staff over pay.
Asked if he had any sympathy with those taking industrial action, Mr Long said: “I’m sympathetic to their cause and I do think there is a genuine issue around pay, but I’m not sympathetic towards strike action. There’s a difference.”
He was asked if recent years had been the most difficult in his tenure, as the Covid-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020 arrived when staff were already exhausted after facing traditional winter pressures, and now the NHS was beset by strikes and industrial unrest.
“Undoubtedly,” he replied. “Since the pandemic we’ve been really trying to get our waiting lists and waiting times back under control. We’ve had to cope with really significant and prolonged emergency pressures and we’ve got other external factors, challenges in social care being the main one [which causes extended occupancy of hospital beds], that have just been piling the pressure on our staff and it’s been utterly relentless for them.”
As someone who has been to war and served in some of the most dangerous places on Earth, Mr Long was asked if leading a major public health organisation through such challenges ever felt tougher than being in the Army.
‘THERE HAVE BEEN TREMENDOUS ADVANCES IN PATIENT CARE’: Chris Long. Picture by Tom Arran Commercial Photography
He said: “In a funny sort of way, yes, and it’s because it has just been so prolonged, I think. You know, when we sent troops to Northern Ireland or anywhere else you’d rotate them out after six months, and here it’s now been going on for three years, or over three years, so yes, it has been tough, it has been really relentless, and I really feel for the staff who are coming in every day and doing their best against that sort of backdrop.”
The trust famously found itself on the early frontlines of the pandemic when the first two Covid cases in the UK were diagnosed and initially treated at the infectious diseases unit at Castle Hill. This was after two members of a family of Chinese nationals arrived in York feeling unwell after flying in from China. They were quickly dispatched to Castle Hill after calling the NHS 111 line.
Those dramatic 48 hours were exclusively reported by The Hull Story following interviews with the senior medics who were there.
Asked if he could remember the moment he was informed, and how he felt at the time, Mr Long said: “I do vividly remember it and I think I always will. And my feeling was ‘Oh my God, this is for real now’.
“When you look at the sort of whole machinery that swept in – this fleet of ambulances turning up at Castle Hill to transport the patients up to Newcastle, with all of the staff in full PPE – and then we kind of moved into the era of evacuating or lockdown. The world changed on that day and it’s changed permanently I think.”
PRESSURE: ‘The world changed the day Covid arrived’: Chris Long, pictured during an interview at the height of the pandemic
He also had an alarming warning about the country’s preparedness for another pandemic.
“We were not well prepared for Covid,” he said. “That’s an absolute fact. We are still not prepared for a major pandemic. The lockdown was a really valuable tool in terms of managing the spread of infection. I don’t think the nation would accept another lockdown if it happened too quickly, so I think there’s a challenge there about how we might handle it.
“A lot of our hospitals up and down the country are sort of not the right size, or don’t have enough room to have beds sufficiently far apart to reduce the infection risk adequately, because we always try and build them small because that makes them cheaper, so that’s something else we are going to have to think about. The stockpiles of kit and then turning the kit over was another issue.
“One of the things that we found in Covid was when you had a very, very high demand for oxygen was getting sufficient oxygen to the patients who actually needed it, and in the volumes that they needed it.
“And I became [laughs] quite an expert in the whole principle of vaccum-insulated evaporators, Boyle’s law, and how far you can sort of push gas under pressure to the point where it’s still useful at the end of a line, and you know, we are not designed to deal with the level of demand that we saw in the first and subsequent waves so we had to improvise.
PANDEMIC PIONEERS: Some of the senior Hull doctors who dealt with the UK’s first two Covid-19 cases at Castle Hill Hospital in January 2020. From left, consultants Nick Easom, Anda Samson, and Patrick Lillie in the infectious diseases unit at Castle Hill
“And our engineers did a fantastic job doing that. Otherwise we just wouldn’t have been able to get sufficient oxygen to patients when they needed it the most.
“So there’s a whole raft of things, but we can prepare for another respiratory virus circulating and we’ll end up with something like, God help us, Ebola or something. That’s just one of the challenges that planners, policy-makers are going to have to face up to.”
With over three decades of experience in the NHS, Mr Long is able to look back happily on some remarkably improved outcomes for patients.
He said: “When I joined the NHS a quarter of patients who went into a coronary care unit would die; now it’s very, very rare indeed.
“The diagnosis of breast cancer was a death sentence to all intents and purposes, now most people who are diagnosed with breast cancer will survive and go on to live a normal life.
“Stomach ulcers used to be a really big thing and it would require major surgery to get them sorted out, and then some clever guy suddenly discovered they were created by a bacteria and all you needed was an antibiotic; it’s not quite that simple but you could cure stomach ulcers, and so you’ve seen these changes, these gradual changes taking place.
“And if we take the example of stroke, for instance, we now have got staff who are quite comfortable with the notion of introducing tubes into your blood vessels, getting them into the brain and hoovering out the blood clot that caused the stroke and the patient’s back on his feet the following day – absolutely unheard of.
“So you’ve got all of these advances that do make a difference to people.”
The NHS celebrated its 75th birthday last month and continues to be one of the most cherished organisations in British history, but still finds itself subject to almost constant debate about its future. One of the most contentious issues is whether it can survive as it was founded – as a universal service free at the point of delivery.
Mr Long said: “I’ve always said I think the NHS is more of a philosophy than an institution and that philosophy is care according to need, free at the point of delivery regardless of ability to pay. So that will survive.
“I think the NHS is too woven into everything we are and everything we do as a nation for it ever to go away.
BREAKTHROUGH: Patient Sheila Page becomes the first person in East Yorkshire to receive a Covid-19 vaccination in December 2020. Pictured at Castle Hill Hospital with Sister Kristy Costa administering the jab. Picture by Neil Holmes Photography
“I do think it needs quite significant change, though. And I think we need to be looking around the world at how different health systems operate and seeing what’s the best that we can pluck from each of those, and we also need to bring stability to it too – I’ve gone through more reorganisations of the NHS than I can shake a stick at.
“It needs stability to evolve because that revolution politicians attach so much importance to is not going to happen.”
Asked if he will miss his job as he enters his final week, Mr Long, 62, said: “I will miss the people I work with enormously. They are absolutely inspirational and they are what get me into work every day.
“I will miss the city, because I’ve worked in the city for 19 years even though I’ve only been in HUTH for nine. I will miss this city and the people who live here.
“I won’t miss the kind of environment of that the NHS operates in. There are aspects of it which almost seem designed to prevent people doing a good job. And so there are some of those aspects I won’t miss, but the role, the people, the place, will have left a lasting impression.”
‘THE REGULATORY FRAMEWORK CAN BE FRUSTRATING WHEN PATIENT CARE SHOULD ALWAYS BE THE PRIORITY’: Chris Long, speaking to The Hull Story. Picture by Tom Arran Commercial Photography
Asked to expand on those concerns, Mr Long said: “I think inevitably, given that we hoover up such a large chunk of taxpayers’ money, that there is a very strong political focus and political drive and agenda around the NHS, and the way that that’s managed and regulated I don’t think is always helpful.
“Political intervention has got less, but the kind of regulatory framework and interventions that exist at the behest of politicians are not always helpful. External monitoring, there has to be a degree of it; as I said you can’t hoover up that amount of taxpayers’ money and not have it, but whether it’s proportionate, whether it’s balanced, whether it helps patients – because ultimately, that’s what it’s all got to be about – I don’t believe it always does and it certainly frustrates staff in their attempt to deliver good care sometimes.”
Looking to the future, Mr Long is determined that retirement for him will mean just that. Asked what his plans were, he said: “I’m not going to work. I think quite often people go back and they go into non-executive directorships or consultancy or something – I think after 44 years I’ve done a decent shift, so I’m going to look to spend time with family, travel, try and perfect a game of golf that’s pretty non-existent, that sort of thing.”
But there is no doubt it is going to be a wrench.
He paused when asked if he had a final message for his colleagues, then said: “I think my message is thank you. I cannot articulate the level of pride that I have in working with you and watching you do what you do every day.”
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