NURSE! FIX HUNT’S NHS
»»New Health Sec’s 25yrs on the wards »»‘Scary Spice’ Anne has her work cut out Hellish day in the life of winter crisis A&E
As I walked in, the fluorescent yellow of ambulance vehicles had overflowed out of the ambulance bay into the adjacent car park. The paramedics looking to hand their patients to hospital staff were queuing down the corridor, their patients next to them on trolleys.
The crews’ faces reminded me of the looks of expressionless despair you see on the faces of people in a slow moving post office queue.
The consultants’ computer screen had turned virtually all red, meaning that the four-hour target for patients to be treated and discharged or admitted had been breached in nearly all cases due to the lack of beds. One Here, an A&E doctor, working in a busy London hospital shares his story of despair during one gruelling 14-hour shift last week.
patient had been waiting for over 16 hours for a bed.
I was not relishing dealing with the never-ending queue of ambulance staff. There were no available trolleys or cubicles. The short supply of resources is a constant problem. The red phone where the Ambulance Service ring ahead for a patient they are ‘blue lighting’ went five times in two hours. On one occasion, the A&E sister came running and said there was no room in Resuscitation and asked whether I could meet paramedics at the door and do my own assessment.
I saw two patients nursing head injuries from being hit with metal objects. One was an accident and the other was more deliberate. Both had vomited and one had been knocked out for over a minute, according to a witness. That meant a brain scan for both. I ordered the scan and a porter.
After 30 minutes I chased up the porters about why the scan had not happened and was told there were no nurses available to escort the patient and there was a shortage of porters.
The recent agency pay cap and Brexit has hit nursing levels. After two hours the scan had still not happened. I grabbed a wheelchair myself, put one of the patients in and asked the other if they could walk and then proceeded to take both myself.
On returning to the department, I heard someone screaming with pain. It was a woman aged 27 that the computer informed me was a miscarriage and had been waiting three hours and 40 minutes. I found her lying on the floor sobbing. When I entered the room she begged me to give her some painkillers. I quickly returned with some and made it my mission to find a trolley myself.
In the end I had to ask a gentleman in his 30s to vacate his trolley and have his drip whilst sitting on a chair so I could take his trolley to the young woman. Once on a trolley, and after some painkillers, she was more comfortable and I was able to quickly discharge her and bring her back the next morning for a scan. She humbly accepted my apology for the first three hours of her stay in the department and left seemingly grateful and offering thanks.
It was as if she had some understanding of what me, my colleagues and the NHS are up against.