Record Heatwave Pushes Hospitals Into Emergency Measures
Hospitals are having to adopt winter-style emergency measures, including turning away patients through being busy, as the National Health Service (NHS) struggles to cope with illnesses caused by the heatwave in the UK.
Hospitals, emergency units full
Patients are being treated in corridors, and queues of ambulances are building up outside A&E units in what hospital bosses say are unprecedented scenes for the summer which is usually the quietest time of year for the NHS. Large numbers of people are falling ill with heatstroke, dehydration, exhaustion and breathing problems, as well as experiencing falls – incidents all linked to the record-breaking temperatures since June.
The health service was having the busiest summer on record, said hospital chiefs and senior doctors.
Hospitals are being forced to lay on extra beds to admit people needing to be treated as emergencies, while many GP surgeries and ambulance crews are also facing an unusually high demand for their services.
Malcolm Tunnicliff, an A&E consultant at King’s College hospital in London, said: “It’s the busiest summer we’ve ever had. Usually the summer is the NHS’s quieter time, but not this year. There’s been no respite this year.
Increased dehydration cases
“At 10pm on Tuesday we had a queue of ambulances outside the A&E that was the same length as we would get in February, and lots of people waiting to get into a bed.
“We’re seeing a lot of older people who have become dehydrated because they weren’t drinking enough or because their diuretic drugs [which increase urination] are making them dehydrated.
Dehydration is also leading to mainly older people having faints, collapses and also becoming more prone to infections.”
Increased heat stroke cases
A number of hospitals have been treating higher than usual numbers of older people living in care homes who have become dehydrated, many of whom need inpatient care.
Paramedics last week set up drips and looked after patients on trolleys in the corridor of one of London’s biggest hospitals, while hospitals in the north-west and west Midlands also had to temporarily divert emergency patients to nearby A&E units.
The number of people visiting a family doctor in England in recent weeks because of heatstroke has reached the highest level for five years, according to figures collated by the Royal College of GPs’ research and surveillance centre.
Richard Mitchell, chief executive of Sherwood Forest NHS trust, in the East Midlands, said the organisation had experienced “a recordbreaking summer for emergency care attendances”.
He added: “Our increase has been particularly from patients presenting with minor injuries and illnesses, and conditions such as respiratory problems, which are linked to the long periods of hot weather.”
So far in August the trust hastreated an average of 435 patients a day, 11 per cent more than the 388 a day it had during August 2017.