HELL AT A&E
30 patients are stuck on trolleys for up to 15 hours
PATIENTS lie on hospital trolleys in rows four wide and five deep across a packed A&E department.
Others line the corridors, squeezed in anywhere doctors can find space. More than 30 sick and exhausted patients have waited up to 15 hours to be moved to a ward, but the hospital is full – there is nowhere to go.
This is not some Third World country, or a scene from a disaster movie.
These are real pictures from a British hospital that lay bare the true terrifying extent of the winter crisis that has crippled our beloved health service.
The shocking images were captured during a typical night at Nottingham’s Queen’s Medical Centre during the peak of the crisis in January, shown for the first time on last night’s BBC2 documentary Hospital.
Claire Reay, nurse in charge at the A&E, is heard saying: “Where there’s space, there will be a trolley.”
One patient, who could not see properly, is clearly disturbed, saying: “It makes me feel anxious that I can’t see what’s around me, but I know I’m in the middle of a big room with lots of people I don’t know. It’s not dignified, people spending their nights next to random strangers when they are poorly.”
It is just a snapshot of the horrifying problems facing the whole country – A&Es bulging at the seams, chronic bed and staff shortages, and high numbers of elderly “bed blockers” due to a lack of funding for social care.
During January the QMC treated fewer than 20% of cancer patients within the 62-day target because there were not enough specialists to cope.
In footage to be screened next week, cancer surgeon David Grant admits: “I know in my own practice sometimes a delay in getting someone in the operating theatre could be the difference between life and death.
“It stings when that happens. These