ED reels after its busiest 24 hours
CAIRNS Hospital Emergency Department has recorded its busiest day in history with 341 people passing through the doors in 24 hours.
Cairns Hospital and Hinterland Health Service executive director of medical services Dr Don Mackie said the patients who came through on Monday, May 2 eclipsed the previous record set in February 2021 with a 10 per cent increase.
“We saw a number of people coming through, a lot of them being walk-in patients, and there was an increase in the lower triage categories, or the lower degree of urgency,” he said.
“There’s a few reasons why people are heading to the ED including an increase in the population as a result of tourism, people postponed seeking care over the long weekend, and a continued GP shortage in the Far North.
“People are finding it really hard to get in general practices, particularly on the weekend … we really encourage people to call the 13 Healthline where they will be triaged and have a conversation with a nurse about the appropriate level of care to match their problem.”
Dr Mackie said health services had concerns about the flu coming back on its own, and combined with Covid, which is expected to only add to the stress on the emergency department.
“We’re still in the tail end of Covid, and while we’ve had two years with very low levels of influenza, it looks like it’s coming back,” he said.
“We don’t really have a great understanding of how the two viruses will interact but it doesn’t feel like it’s going to be a good thing. There’s already been an outbreak in Yarrabah a couple of weeks ago.”
Cairns Hospital director of integrated medicine Dr Linda Bailey said increasing numbers of patients had hospital employees looking at how they could be addressed with emergency department expansions.
“We have had some works done on the emergency departments over the last several years to improve patient flow,” she said.
“We’ve got $26.4m to continue our further development of the ED, which will give some additional capacity to manage both the surges and the ongoing increase in demand that we are seeing.
“I think it’s really important that we do make sure the emergency services are being used for emergencies.”