A sea of trolleys, patients waiting for 15 hours... damning picture of A&E in crisis
STACKED up in rows five wide and four deep, patients lie on trolleys for up to 15 hours.
These were the undignified scenes inside the A&E unit of one of the country’s largest teaching hospitals this winter.
In video footage, a senior nurse is overhead saying: ‘Where there’s space, there will be a trolley.’
Another member of staff remarks that the department was previously so quiet they used to play cricket. The footage was taken in Nottingham’s Queen’s Medical Centre for the BBC2 documentary Hospital. And it was being replicated in A&E units up and down the country as the NHS faced its worst-ever winter.
The documentary also reveals how consultants elsewhere in the hospital were being paid to ‘twiddle their thumbs’. Consultant orthopaedic surgeon Peter James says: ‘We’re being paid to work but we’re just trying to find something constructive to do.’
Asked if he is twiddling his thumbs, he replies: ‘Yes’, adding: ‘Anaesthetists are in the same position. Lists are going down so everyone is finishing early.
‘We’re just left largely at a loose end feeling that we should be contributing, that we should be working. It’s very weird. If it was summer I could go and play golf.’ The hospital said that across the casualty unit, there were 57 patients waiting to be admitted on to a ward, lying on trolleys or in beds in cubicles.
NHS England said: ‘We know that all parts of the NHS have been feeling the pressure this winter due to the effects of flu and norovirus and, once again, we thank all those staff who have been working hard to ensure that patients get the care they need.’ The Hospital series continues next Tuesday on BBC2 at 9pm