Sunday, 10 July 2022 | 17.7°C Belfast

We’re telling people they’re ill enough for hospital but not a bed, warns consultant

Dr Paul Baylis says it has been 'exhausting' trying to deal with an overwhelmed emergency department.

Hard-pressed accident and emergency doctors are having to decide which patients are well enough to sit in chairs while waiting to be admitted to wards.

A senior emergency medicine consultant said an increasing part of his day was being spent assessing how urgently patients needed a trolley as the health service continues to struggle with unprecedented demand.

It comes as it emerged a patient died after waiting outside a hospital’s emergency department for eight hours on Monday.

A review to establish the circumstances of the patient’s death outside the Ulster Hospital in Dundonald is currently under way.

The South Eastern Trust said it was “very saddened” by what had happened and that paramedics and hospital staff worked on the elderly lady while she was waiting to be admitted.

However, her condition deteriorated and she passed away.

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Dr Paul Baylis, who works in the emergency department at Altnagelvin Area Hospital in Londonderry, said: “I have 28 patients waiting for beds in wards this morning, but I only have 27 cubicles.

“Every single space is taken up, which means we’re telling patients they’re sick enough to be admitted to hospital but not sick enough to lie down. I have to spend my time trying to decide who is well enough to sit in a chair and who really needs to be on a trolley. It means that patients could spend hours sitting in a chair, holding a drip stand, waiting to be admitted. These are all people who are sick, and as well as looking after their medical needs, my staff are also looking after them. It’s exhausting.”

Dr Baylis said while emergency medicine was “broken” before the pandemic, it had got even worse in the past two years.

He he added that ambulance service colleagues had also come under tremendous strain during the health crisis.

The demands placed on the service have resulted in some stroke and heart attack patients being advised to make their own way to accident and emergency departments.

Dr Baylis said he had helped an elderly patient to her daughter’s car on Monday night because there was no ambulance available to take her to the care home where she lives.

“We had an elderly patient in from a nursing home with a fractured rib, and by the time she had been seen and was able to go home, it was after midnight,” he explained.

“She didn’t need to be admitted, but she would have been waiting all night for an ambulance, so her daughter asked for a hand to get her out to the car.

“I didn’t feel very good about it and apologised profusely, but it was important that she got back to her own environment. 

“She wouldn’t have got an ambulance until the morning.”

As well as operating with reduced staff numbers because of people self-isolating with Covid, emergency departments are also dealing with people’s medical conditions deteriorating over the pandemic.

Dr Baylis also said they he and his colleagues were diagnosing an increasing number of cancers that had gone undetected over the past two years.

Staff in accident and emergency departments have been working in awful conditions throughout the health crisis.

The Belfast Telegraph revealed last month 250 patients had died in emergency departments while waiting to be admitted in just 10 months of last year.

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