The NHS in Wales is short of almost 400 hospital doctors, according to figures obtained by the BBC.

Radio Wales has discovered that patients may have to travel further or wait longer to be seen, while more shifts will be filled by locum doctors.

The Eye on Wales programme has been told hospitals are being "downgraded" due to the lack of doctors, and closing small hospitals could be the solution.

The Welsh Assembly Government said the number of vacancies was a concern.

Currently there are about 5,500 hospital doctors in Wales.

"We basically do not have enough doctors to throw at this problem"

There has been concern from doctors on the ward, who fear their opportunities to train are being limited.

Dr Carys Jones, a trainee at Ysbyty Gwynedd in Bangor, said: "It's something, I think, that has especially affected the medical directorate recently."

She added: "In my team, in cardiology, we have been without some registrars for a few weeks.

"The registrar is quite useful, not quite as senior as a consultant but experienced enough to deal with most things that happen on the ward.

'Quite difficult'

"So it was quite difficult without them there at the time."

Colin Ferguson, a consultant vascular surgeon and a spokesman for the Royal College of Surgeons in Wales, said: "We basically do not have enough doctors to throw at this problem.

"The only other solution is to amalgamate units and reduce the number of individual services that are available.

"There are lots of small units in Wales and I think it does make both clinical and financial and economic and service sense for some of these units to be amalgamated into networks which are much more sustainable."

Downgraded

Andrea Griffiths's son Jaden was born at 24 weeks last year weighing one and a half pounds, and he was transferred from Merthyr Tydfil's Prince Charles Hospital to a unit in Bristol with the highest level - three - of neo-natal intensive care.

"It's probably the worst thing in your life you'll ever go through and they're sent away," she said.

"It just seems so unfair."

"In our health trust we've got the Royal Glamorgan Hospital [at Llantrisant] and it's actually got facilities to be a level three, but they haven't got enough middle grade doctors so it's downgraded to a level two.

"He might not have had to go to Bristol anyway; he could have just gone to Llantrisant."

Last summer two paediatric wards at Swansea had to be closed and services centralised at Morriston due to a lack of doctors.

The Welsh Assembly Government said the number of hospital doctor vacancies was a concern and it was working to find ways to recruit and retain them.