Doctors warn of ‘massive’ winter crisis in UK’s overstretched A&E departments

Health / Mon 18th Nov 2024 at 08:41am

EMERGENCY doctors have sounded the alarm over an approaching winter crisis that they say is already putting patients in overstretched A&E departments at risk reports The Guardian.

Nearly all medics (94%) fear patients are coming to harm because of the conditions in A&E departments around the UK, according to a snapshot survey of 83 medics from emergency departments from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM).

Most (87%) are not confident their departments will cope well over the winter months, while 41% feel less prepared for this winter compared with last year.

Click below for more details.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/nov/18/uk-doctors-winter-crisis-accident-and-emergency

8 Comments for Doctors warn of ‘massive’ winter crisis in UK’s overstretched A&E departments:

Nicholas Taylor

2024-11-18 10:05:52

Having very recently spent over 25 hours in A&E, I do wonder how our local councillors can continue to support the building of thousands of homes in and around Harlow, when the building of a new hospital (without any more beds in it than in the present hospital) is probably 10 years away, if ever. Following my collapse in the Town Park last Sunday week, a call to 999 received a response that there was a 9 hour wait for an ambulance. A police offficer took me to PAH, where quite frankly the situation was appalling. I overheard that there was a 6 hour wait to see a doctor, well good luck with that! There were not enough seats for patients relatives to sit with them, I was advised that there were no beds available in the hospital to admit new patients, I spoke to one person who had been in an ambulance outside for 5 hours and at least two people were there when I got there and 25 hours later were still there. I feel sure that if you had a poorly pet and went to a vet the animal would receive better care than most of the peole I saw at PAH.

Jean

2024-11-18 10:27:41

Well said- been in A+E for myself and relatives and each time was horrendous.

Jarvis.

2024-11-18 12:23:06

And people think the best way to deal with this is to keep adding to the population!

Resident

2024-11-18 15:20:33

Surely it's also time to build more residential care homes so that people who don't need hospital care but can't return home because there isn't the facilities or people at home to care for them can be discharged and free up hospital beds. I've heard many times that this is a big problem. But I totally agree, and it's been said by everyone other than those making the planning decisions, that no more housing should be built and no mass movement from other areas into harlow until , at the very least, critical services are in place to support that growth

Guy Flegman

2024-11-18 16:22:27

If you cannot get emergency care then we don’t really have a NHS do we.

Stuart J

2024-11-18 21:44:47

Another A&E crisis predicted this coming winter, so what’s new then? Why is this happening, lack of GP appointments, increased population, lack of money? All good reasons, but take a look at the various numbers since the NHS came into existence in 1948, compared to 2023 No of Doctors 11,735 now 115,000 No of Nurses 68,013 now 217,000 No of Midwife’s 5,673 now 22,000 So probably not a staffing problem. But it could be an infrastructure one. No of Hospitals 2,588 now 550 with 212 A&E depts No of beds 480,000 down to 125,000 Ah yes, that could be the answer, nowhere enough Hospitals or beds to cope present day demands. Over the years far too many hospitals have merged together, creating large medical hubs, saving money and for the greater good, so we are all told. The surplus land of the closed hospitals was sold off for housing developments and maybe some health centres were built. But that hasn’t solve the A&E problems in these hubs, that are now far too small to cope with the ever growing demand with patients queuing in corridors and waiting for hours to be seen or for a vacant ward bed. No Government in the last 60 odd years has ever addressed this problem by building additional hospitals and increasing the numbers of beds. It’s a case of catering for today’s demand and not for tomorrow’s that somebody else’s problem, no matter what colour party you represent.

chris

2024-11-19 09:21:06

It's just a yearly broken record. Nothing changed, nothing learned, nothing gained. Only the people loose out on services, services the government puts in place to supposedly care for the people to continue them supporting the system and keeping them in a need.