Emergency department pressures 'worse than Groundhog Day'

The situation at Northern Ireland’s emergency departments is getting steadily worse, a senior hospital consultant has said.

On Thursday evening, the Department of Health said emergency departments “remain under extreme pressure”.

It said there were “significant numbers of frail older people with complex conditions attending”.

At one stage on Thursday, the average wait at Craigavon Area Hospital was more than eight and a half hours.

Dr Paul Baylis, a consultant in emergency medicine at Altnagelvin Hospital in Londonderry, said the situation was worse than Groundhog Day.

“I’d settle for Groundhog Day at the moment; the truth is it isn’t Groundhog Day because in Groundhog day it was always the same.

“Things are getting worse steadily and that’s the reality,” Dr Baylis told Good Morning Ulster.

“It’s quite simply overrun – when things are overrun things become inefficient and everything grinds to a halt.

“That’s extremely frustrating for the doctors and nurses working there, but more so for the patients who are sitting on trolleys – if they’re lucky getting lying down on trolleys, many patients are sitting on chairs.”

Earlier this month, the most senior civil servant at the department of health said there was no room in the budget for additional social care funding to ease emergency department overcrowding.

Peter May was speaking to BBC Spotlight, which spent two days filming at Craigavon Area Hospital in County Armagh.

And several weeks ago the director of the Royal College of Nursing in Northern Ireland told BBC News NI that scenes at the Royal Victoria Hospital’s emergency department (ED) were shocking, distressing and heart-breaking.

Rita Devlin visited nurses on the front line, 48 hours before a planned strike and said she saw “people lying head-to-toe everywhere.”

Just days before Christmas, the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service said it was at its “highest level of pressure”, with waits of more than 24 hours for some patients.

On Friday, Dr Baylis told the BBC that he had 34 cubicles for emergency patients at Altnagelvin.

“They’re now almost permanently full of people waiting for beds and that’d be fine if I had 34 patients waiting for beds, more often than not I have more.

“On Wednesday morning when I came in after the two bank holidays I had 50 people waiting for beds in a unit with 34 beds.”

Dr Baylis said that he currently had a “ward of sick people with a little bit of emergency department tacked round the edge where we do our very best to provide a service”.

“So if you have a sprained ankle or you’ve bust your wrist, well clearly that’s our business.

“But what we end up doing is pulling up a chair in the corridor, apologising profusely to the patient, but asking would they mind telling us the story sitting down with folk walking past.

“That’s not dignified, it’s not appropriate, but it’s either that or sit in the waiting room and wait ad infinitum.”

He said he had talked to friends at Craigavon Area Hospital and other hospitals across Northern Ireland who were having similar experiences.

In its statement at 17:00 GMT on Thursday, the Department of Health added: “We pay tribute to staff who are working tirelessly in very difficult conditions.

“The pressures on services are have led to long waits for patients.

“If you believe your condition is a medical emergency, then a hospital emergency department is the right place to attend. Staff continue to treat the sickest patients quickest and less urgent cases have to wait longer.”