Hot hospitals putting lives of vulnerable patients at risk

Sweltering wards threat to those who are already ill, as well as making work uncomfortable for staff

HOT NHS hospitals are risking patient safety as the number of overheating wards hit a record high last year, figures show.

There were more than 6,800 cases of wards or clinical areas exceeding 26C (79F) in 2022-23, which the NHS says puts vulnerable patients at risk.

The number of incidents reported by hospitals was up by almost a quarter on the year before, and more than double the 2,980 incidents that occurred six years ago in 2016-17, the analysis of NHS data by the Liberal Democrat Party revealed.

Opposition MPS said the incidents were “a threat to patient safety” and causing “needless disruption”.

Patients aged 65 and over or with health conditions such as those affecting the lungs or heart are at higher risk from overheating. Once temperatures surpass 26C, these vulnerable groups “are physiologically unable to cool themselves efficiently”, the NHS says.

This can lead to heat exhaustion and, if untreated, develop into heatstroke, which requires emergency intervention to cool the body.

Hot wards and clinical areas can also affect patient care in other, less direct ways. A recent report said that overheating had caused issues with refrigerators used to store medicines, the failure of essential hospital equipment and the crashing of IT systems that hold patient information.

As temperatures in Britain reached record highs of 40C in July 2022, the heatwave caused computer systems at one of the NHS’S biggest hospital trusts, Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital in London, to fail and patients’ care to be disrupted and operations cancelled.

A fifth of hospitals were forced to cancel operations during the peak of that heatwave, according to a study published in the British Journal of Surgery.

A separate report, produced by the campaign group Round Our Way, said staff also suffered from working in hot conditions, which could in turn affect patient care.

“In addition to patient distress, high temperatures pose an occupational health risk to NHS staff,” it said. It cited evidence that the “cognitive performance” of doctors and nurses decreased at high, or even mild, temperatures of 24C, lowering their productivity.

Experts have also found that nine in 10 wards are at risk of overheating because of the design of buildings. With a third of the NHS estate built before 1965, the buildings are primarily designed to keep heat in, rather than cool.

Daisy Cooper, the Liberal Democrat health spokesman, said the rise in incidents “must act as a wake-up call to ministers to fix crumbling hospital buildings before it’s too late”.

It comes after it was revealed earlier this year that dozens of hospital buildings have the unsafe aerated concrete known as RAAC, with seven hospitals built entirely out of the material.

The Department for Health was approached for comment.