KNIFE CRIME CRIPPLING HOSPITALS

Ambulances delayed, operations cancelled and police on wards as crimewave hits NHS

BRITAIN’S knife crime epidemic is forcing all patients to suffer, a top NHS surgeon has warned.

Professor Chris Moran said spiralling violence was having a ‘ripple effect’ across the health service, from A&Es to GP surgeries. As well as leaving young lives shattered, stabbings are soaking up precious time and resources. As a result patients are suffering longer ambulance waits – while routine procedures such as hip, knee and cataract operations are being cancelled, the surgeon said.

Hospitals in the worst-affected areas are even stationing police officers on wards to protect patients and staff from gangs, he said. Professor Moran, the NHS’s leading trauma surgeon, also spoke of how the ‘sea change’ in stabbings had spread from inner cities to affect health services across England.

Knife crime has now reached record levels and figures last month showed 40,829 offences were recorded by police last

year – an average of 112 a day. Theresa May has described the surge as an ‘infectious disease’ and called for a public health approach. But so far little has been mentioned of the impact on the NHS as a whole.

Officials insist hospital staff are coping with the rise in knife crime. However, Professor Moran, who practises at the country’s largest trauma unit – the Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham – said: ‘In the last five years we’ve seen a sea change and it feels like it’s steadily increasing.

‘We’ve seen a one-third increase in numbers admitted [with stab wounds] but in the under 20s it’s about a 60 per cent increase.

‘It has a ripple effect throughout the whole system because it obviously increases the workload of the emergency department.

‘There’s a large number who’ve got very serious injuries who need the trauma team, they need admission, they need... intensive care... it means operating time is lost, while we do extra emergency cases. It’s having a

‘Gangs on wards try to finish the job’

significant increase in acute services in the NHS and then a knock-on effect in elective care because you end up cancelling surgery to operate in these cases, a knock-on effect on general practitioners who are having to try and pick up the pieces.’

He said a typical trauma team of six – two nurses and four doctors – would be forced to drop whatever they were doing when a victim of violent crime arrived.

Professor Moran, NHS England’s national clinical lead for trauma – who co-ordinates 27 major trauma centres and 110 smaller units across the country – said: ‘On my unit yesterday we had two stabbings. One was under 20, one was a man in his early 30s.

‘We always prioritise patients according to clinical need. If someone’s got a collapsed lung or they are bleeding to death they take priority and that means you stop what you are doing and look after them.’ The NHS is already under intense pressure because of Britain’s ageing population and the growing burden of lifestyle-related conditions such as obesity and diabetes.

Recent figures showed more than half a million patients had waited longer than 18 weeks for their planned operation, the Government target. The health service is also severely understaffed, with an estimated 100,000 posts currently vacant – one in eight of the workforce. Professor Moran said: ‘We’re doing what we’re there for – save lives, save limbs, put lives back together again. Everyone is doing their best but it clearly puts additional pressure on the service.’

He also spoke of how gangs ‘almost certainly’ armed with knives were coming in to wards to ‘finish the job’ on victims, forcing hospitals to deploy police officers and security guards. ‘It’s very common now almost daily in my hospitals and certainly in the London hospitals for us to have a permanent police guard on the ward,’ he added.

‘[They are] preventing reprisal attacks and also these days protecting the staff.

‘Sometimes the whole gang will turn up... and when 15 lads turn up on the wards and only two visitors are allowed in, they don’t take it well.’

Professor Moran described stabbing hotspots in east London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds – but said ‘every major centre in the country’ is now feeling the impact of knife crime.

Referring to the effects on ambulance times, he added: ‘Any stabbings come as a “priority one” call so it’s got the same priority as someone whose heart stops.

‘The ambulance service can only be in one place in one time so it’s inevitable that there’s a knock-on effect.

‘Everybody recognises this as a major issue, every major centre in the country is seeing more. There are hotspots but every major trauma centre sees this as an issue.’

Professor Moran, who has been a surgeon for 36 years, said a paediatric trauma team would once treat children who had been knocked down by cars or ice cream vans.

Now when the alarm goes off at 4pm, after school, it’s because a child has been stabbed. He said: ‘I’ve seen a lot of things in my life but I still find it hard watching children die.’

Recent NHS figures showed the number of under-16s admitted to hospital with stab wounds had increased by 93 per cent in five years.

In Scotland, a public health approach to knife crime involving the NHS, education and social work has turned the tide on killings. A Home Office spokesman said: ‘Knife crime destroys lives and tears families apart and we are determined to tackle the root causes to end this cycle of violence.’