ONE of Worcestershire’s two 24-hour Minor Injury Units (MIUs) will close overnight from next month, it has been announced.

Last month your Worcester News reported health bosses had voted to change Tenbury Community Hospital’s opening hours so it was closed between 9pm and 9am daily, and now it has been announced the change will come into effect from Monday, March 9.

The change will leave the county with only one 24-hour MIU – equipped to deal with conditions such as broken bones, burns, cuts and grazes – at Kidderminster Hospital.

It comes after Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust reported it was unable to recruit enough Emergency Nurse Practitioners to staff the unit overnight.

Under Royal College of Emergency Medicine rules all MIUS must be staffed by at least one Emergency Nurse Practitioner at all times, but the trust has been unable to fill the post despite advertising it eight times over the past two years and had instead been forced to resort to expensive agency staff.

Figures also showed the unit saw an average of only six patients a day – compared with between 22 and 27 at the MIUs in Malvern, Evesham and Bromsgrove – and often none at all during the night.

The trust’s lead for community care in south Worcestershire Mel Roberts said: “Since April 2013 88% of people who attended the MIU in Tenbury did so between 9am and 9pm.

“MIUs are there to treat things like cuts, grazes and minor burns and so it’s reasonable that these sorts of things can be treated during these opening hours.

“It is important to note that no other services at Tenbury Community Hospital are affected by this and in fact we are developing plans to increase the types of treatment the hospital will be able to provide.”

A public consultation was held at the end of last year, which showed residents in the area were largely in favour of the plans, as were GPs.

Between April 2013 and December 2014 there had been 316 days in which no patients at all had visited the unit between 9pm and 9am, and the majority of these did so between 8am and 9am, meaning Emergency Nurse Practitioners may have found themselves unable to carry out the number of procedures needed to maintain their accreditation.

Out of hours NHS 111 is also available 24 hours a day to provide free health advice.

Coughs and colds can be treated by a pharmacy or GP.

In the case of serious injuries, choking, chest pain, strokes and severe blood loss always call 999.