Emergency departments across England are facing record-breaking pressures with patients waiting for days on trolleys and corridors. A consultant in an emergency department described the dire situation, reporting a 92-hour wait for a mental health patient and a 66-year-old on a hard couch for 48 hours. He also revealed tragic consequences, including a patient taking their own life in the department and another dying in the corridor. Ambulances are now being instructed to offload patients after a certain time and leave. NHS England figures confirm the busiest year on record for emergency services, with high flu cases, an aging population, and mounting strain on the system.
When you have been doing this job for a long time, you become used to the annual winter pressures story, but I had a call today that really took me aback. It was from a consultant in an emergency department. I am not going to say where to protect him, but I have verified what he was telling me.
As of 3pm today, they had a mental health patient on a trolley who had been waiting for 92 hours, a 66-year-old had been on a hard couch in the emergency department for 48 hours, another medical patient, 45 hoursA new corridor has been opened to take the overflow of patients, but he also wanted to tell me the consequences of these sort of pressures.
Over the past month, a patient took their own life in the department, while another patient died in the corridor.He then went on to say that ambulances are now being told – after a certain length of time – to offload the patient and leave them. He received a message from his bosses asking for barriers to be put in place to stop patients being brought in.NHS England figures today say it was the busiest year on record for emergency services.
These pressures are being felt across the UK, but specifically in England. There were currently about 20 trusts which have declared critical incidents today, and it has been similar over the past couple of days. These incidents can last for just an hour or so, but it means they do not want people coming to A&E if they don’t have to. Sometimes they have to divert patients to neighbouring hospitals.
NHS Emergency Departments Overcrowding Patient Wait Times Critical Incidents
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