The man who has turned around Medway Maritime Hospital’s struggling emergency department was so worried about safety when he first took on the role, he was unable to sleep.

Cliff Evans, from Iwade, revealed how far the department has come since he joined last year.

He set out a clear plan, focusing first on improving safety, then staffing issues and finally, increasing performance.

The consultant nurse said: “We reviewed what was going wrong and we put together a strategy that would stretch over three to five years.

“First of all, we focused on making the department safe as it was clearly unsafe at the time. We put a plan in place to close the use of the corridor and I’m really pleased to say we were able to do that in October and it’s never been used since. That’s great for patient experience and great for staff morale.”

Mr Evans started working at Medway one day a week in 2015 as part of a support scheme from Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells Hospital, before joining Medway full time in January last year.

He said: “I felt a real change last March with the safety factor. It started to feel like we were in a safe department. I hear this every day that I work. Medway emergency department is a totally different place to be. As a team leader there is nothing worse than running a department where you feel the care of patients is unsafe.

“Working in an unsafe emergency department is extremely stressful and it can affect your ability to sleep or relax, as there is so much that has to be done simultaneously to improve things in both the short and long term.”

Medway is the 19th emergency department Mr Evans has worked in and he has also worked as a nurse in the Army Reserves.

When he joined Medway, the department’s nursing vacancy rate was at 65% – the highest he had ever seen in his career. Within six months, this had dropped to 18%. At the end of the summer, A&E will begin to move into a purpose-built building and Mr Evans said staff are excited and looking forward to it.

He said: “If we’d moved into this new development without changing our processes or training our staff, that would have been a disaster.

“Now we are a functioning emergency department and moving in there is going to be fantastic.”