5-hour waits in A&E ... but staff are busy planning next holiday
A PATIENT has accused a nurse at England’s worstperforming A&E of looking up holidays on her work computer while waiting times stretched past five hours.
The NHS worker appears to be browsing sun-kissed beaches while holding a phone in footage shot by the witness.
The patient, who is not named, told of her experience at Princess Alexandra Hospital in Essex on a community Facebook page, writing: ‘Been in A&E for five hours... Meanwhile the nurse is booking her holidays.’
With patients enduring record A&E waiting times, ambulance delays and bed occupancy levels, the post provoked fierce debate.
‘People are dying in ambulances and waiting rooms, yet nurse has time to book a week in Benidorm,’ one Twitter user posted. Another wrote online: ‘Nurse at England’s worst A&E caught booking a holiday. This is not a good look is it?!!’ Another tweeted in response to the picture: ‘The only thing the NHS suffers from is bad management.’
But others defended the employee. One wrote: ‘With the hours they do, it might be the only chance she gets.’ Another said: ‘They work hard, they deserve a break.’
Nearly a third of patients at Princess Alexandra Hospital waited more than four hours in A&E in December – the worst performance in England.
Just 67.3 per cent of people waited less than four hours from arrival to admission, discharge or transfer – well short of the target of 95 per cent.
However, the trust has improved compared with the same period in 2016, when just 62.6 per cent of patients were seen in the target time.
Across England, A& Es reported their worst December performance since records began in 2010, as 85.1 per cent of patients waited less than four hours to be seen.
Responding to the footage, a spokesman for The Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust said: ‘The trust was made aware of this issue immediately and can confirm the individual pictured in the photograph is being managed accordingly.’ The controversy comes amid a winter crisis in the health service.
Two weeks ago, NHS England announced that all non-urgent operations would be cancelled until February.
Experts criticised the move, but it was considered to be the only way to cope with the mounting pressure placed on the health service.
Accident and emergency centres are particularly feeling the strain. Across England, the number of patients waiting more than four hours in December topped 300,000 for the first time – the equivalent of one in seven people attending A&E.
The worrying figures have been partly blamed on a lack of GPs, but a new study suggests long-term health conditions are driving increasing attendance at A&E rather than a shortages of family doctors.
Researchers at Queen Mary University of London examined the records of nearly 820,000 patients in east London to find the reasons behind rising demand on hospitals.
They found that social deprivation and suffering from numerous prolonged health problems were the main factors inflating emergency department attendance.
Patients with four or more long-term conditions had an attendance rate six times higher than those with no such complications, said the study published in the British Journal of General Practice.
Lead researcher Sally Hull said: ‘The same people who attend their GP surgery a lot also attend their emergency department a lot.
‘This is largely because they have multiple long-term health conditions and it is these conditions, along with an ageing population, which are driving the high attendance rates.’
Since it focused on east London, an area with pockets of deprivation and a large ethnic minority population, the authors warn it is not representative of the whole country.
‘This is not a good look’