Two more wards are to shut at Bradford's cash-strapped hospitals.

The 16-bed gynaecology day case unit at Bradford Royal Infirmary will close, meaning that from April 1 women will be treated on a 30-bed gynaecology ward.

And at St Luke's, a 28-bed elderly care ward is set to close at the end of March.

Half its patients will be cared for in care-of-the-elderly beds at the BRI and the other half will shift to a medical ward at St Luke's. The medical patients whose beds are lost will also move to BRI.

Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the two hospitals and is facing a year-end deficit of £11.3 million, has already closed two blocks of wards and operating theatres at St Luke's.

A Trust spokesman said: "All patients will continue to be cared for by the same teams of specialist doctors, alongside nurses skilled in the same fields of expertise.

"As has been widely reported, we have brought forward our plans to improve patient care by centralising more services at BRI. It benefits patients by bringing them closer to key support services, such as intensive care and the latest hi-tech scanners."

A total of 39 nursing staff will be affected by the move and staff on both wards are understood to be devastated.

Some staff will continue to work with the same services in their new locations but others may be forced to fill other nursing vacancies within the Trust. The Trust said alternative employment within the Trust had already been secured for the vast majority of staff.

But nursing staff fear women will lose out when the gynaecology day case unit moves to the larger ward. Women currently being treated on the day case unit undergo terminations (abortions) or a wide variety of other minor operations. On the main ward, they will be alongside women undergoing more major procedures such as hysterectomies.

One staff member, who asked not to be named, said: "Women's healthcare in Bradford will suffer a great deal. The day case unit is a small, private ward but everything will be mixed together in the big ward. Women undergoing a termination will be on the same ward as infertile women. This has been avoided on the day unit.

"We have built up a lovely private ward which is a really nice environment. Patients will now be treated on a big major ward with no privacy. We hope staff will be integrated but there is no guarantee. The staff are more experienced in women's health than in other areas. We feel we have been badly let down - as have the women of Bradford."

A Trust spokesman said the Trust was considering changes to the layout of the larger gynaecology ward to ensure patients' privacy.

"It is important to stress that while these changes will help the Trust to operate more efficiently, patient care remains our top priority. The main focus of changes such as these should not be on bricks and mortar - but the quality of care and the skills of the staff that will continue to be the hallmarks of these services," he said.

The early pregnancy assessment unit will stay in the same place at BRI.

Staff are being offered one-to-one meetings with senior mangers but fear there will not be enough posts within the Trust to meet their specialist skills.

Unison branch secretary Doris Walker said: "We will have to see if there will be redundancies or re-deployments and we will be fighting any redundancies. We will be fighting the closure of the ward. We need to safeguard jobs and the public. It's a very important day clinic for females."

Royal College of Nursing regional officer Susan West said: "We are working in partnership with senior managers and we are hoping there will not be any compulsory redundancies."

Dr John Givans, secretary of Bradford's Local Medical Committee who speaks for Bradford's GPs, said he would have concerns about maintaining privacy for women in a large gynaecology ward.

"It was a great advance when these various different types of conditions were separated and it's a great shame to be going back to the former system but if the Trust is taking steps to assure privacy, it may achieve the objective. The infection risks have got to be watched carefully. We will be monitoring the situation."