Patients unable to leave hospitals
MANY patients who were due for discharge have been left stranded in hospital, unable to leave due to the hazardous travelling conditions.
This meant that they were left occupying beds as over 131 patients across the country waited on trolleys.
However, the cancellation of all non-emergency surgery and outpatient clinics freed up space.
Although several hospitals were without a substantial number of staff, the scaling down of services eased pressure.
Many staff are sleeping overnight in hospitals or in nearby hotels in order to ensure that critical services – including A&E departments, cancer and time-critical surgery – go ahead.
Hospitals will be reduced to a skeleton service again today, leaving a major backlog of patients.
Meanwhile, some elderly people living at home, who are heavily reliant on care and health staff, have been placed in nursing homes during the extreme weather.
In other cases, civil defence teams yesterday drove public health nurses to vulnerable people in the community, including infants who have special medical needs.
Emergency services are treating more people for fractures and other snow-related injuries.
This is expected to increase in the coming days as people get out and about again, leaving them at risk of slipping and sustaining falls in the icy footpaths as they let their guard down.