NHS reopens today as hospital consultant warns ‘we are no longer putting patients on the waiting list for transfer who are just straightforward dying’
The NHS could face its busiest period of the year from today amid warnings some patients are having to be given end-of-life care in busy A&E corridors.
The Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) says emergency departments are “in big trouble” after an extended period where other NHS services were reduced.
The NHS has seen a longer annual “shutdown” of some services this year with Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day then followed by a weekend. The RCEM says this means much of the health and social care system – GPs, many inpatient services, parts of social and community care – will have been closed or operating “on call” at reduced capacity for five days.
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Parts of the NHS that remain open 24/7 like A&Es will have struggled to cope while today people will present to GPs and other services with ailments they endured during the Christmas public holidays.
It comes amid reports of an end-of-life care crisis in Sussex where a consultant delivered a presentation warning it was difficult to find places for patients who were “just straightforward dying”.
Dr Ian Higginson, president of the RCEM, said: “Emergency departments across the UK are in big trouble at the moment. Over the festive season people still get sick, and yet we plan to operate primary care, hospitals, and social and community care, at a reduced capacity.
“We can only fit so many people in our departments. They are already filled with patients on trolleys in corridors, for many hours or even days. It takes most of the first month of the year to recover from this, but it happens every single year.”
The palliative care crisis was reported following a meeting of doctors and officials from East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust .This includes Conquest Hospital in Hastings and Eastbourne District General Hospital. Similar problems are likely happening in other regions.
A slide presentation by a consultant in palliative to community health representatives, seen by the BBC, warned there was often nowhere to discharge patients to with local hospices also struggling. She said: “I am really worried that patients who have treatable conditions are not going to be able to get into hospital and be treated because there are so many end-of-life patients in hospital beds.”
The presentation entitled “Palliative and End of Life Care in Sussex” took place at a meeting on November 4 where the consultant said “we are no longer putting patients on the waiting list for transfer who are just straightforward dying”. She also revealed heartbreaking dilemmas such as a “really difficult choice – do you admit them for corridor care or do you turn them round, put them in the back of the ambulance where they may die on the way home”.
It comes after the UK Health Security Agency has issued an amber Cold-Health Alert for the North West and North East regions of England from 8pm on Sunday 28 December to midday on Monday 5 January. All other regions in England will be under a yellow alert for this period.
The UKHSA warns this will result in more heart attacks, strokes and chest infections among older people – and more pressure on the NHS.
Dr Agostinho Sousa, Head of Extreme Events and Health Protection at the UKHSA, said: “As the colder weather sets in it is vital to check in on friends, family and neighbours that are most vulnerable.
“The forecasted temperatures can have a serious impact on the health of some people, leading to increased risk of heart attacks, strokes and chest infections, particularly for individuals over the age of 65 and those with pre-existing health conditions.”
Dr Ian Higginson said: “The main problem we have is that we have patients in our corridors – we’re full to bursting… and that’s because there aren’t enough beds in our hospitals. And it also creates difficult working conditions for our staff – our staff at the moment are run ragged, exhausted and suffering from a mixture of either burnout, moral injury or exhaustion, PTSD or a mixture of all of the above.”
Earlier this year the college released estimates that suggested there were more than 16,600 deaths of patients linked to very long waits in A&E for a hospital bed last year – the equivalent of approximately 320 deaths a week.
Dr Higginson added: “If we had 16,000 patients a year dying in bus crashes or in aircraft crashes or anywhere else there would be such howls of outrage something would be done about it.”
A spokesperson for the NHS in Sussex said it was committed to ensuring that patients have access to the “best possible, high-quality palliative and end-of-life care”. They said: “This includes providing a range of places for compassionate, person-centred care – and importantly, where possible, in settings out of hospital, such as community settings, and our hospices.
“Emergency care services across Sussex remain under significant pressure but staff continue to work incredibly hard to make sure patients can receive the care they need at our hospitals, and across all our health and care services.”
