At lunchtime on New Year’s Eve, Sky News counted 24 ambulances parked exterior the A&E division on the Royal Stoke University Hospital.
A nurse from contained in the hospital was popping out to verify on sufferers who have been ready within the ambulances receiving remedy from paramedics.
A member of ambulance employees informed Sky News that their official dashboard confirmed 32 ambulances have been caught ready to switch sufferers on the hospital.
They mentioned the extra seven have to be ready around the again after all of the area on the entrance of the hospital was taken.
And they mentioned there have been solely 56 ambulances overlaying Staffordshire at present, so greater than half of the accessible ambulances for the county have been caught ready at one hospital.
Dennis Hodgkins is a paramedic and consultant of the UNISON union who works in Staffordshire.
He informed Sky News the state of affairs was the “worst we’ve ever seen”.
Some Category One calls – like coronary heart assaults or anaphylactic shocks – have taken him 25 minutes to answer, in comparison with a goal time of round seven minutes attributable to an absence of accessible autos due to the queues.
“The chances of survival are going to be reduced massively” in such circumstances, Mr Hodgkins mentioned.
The incident comes amid warnings from well being leaders that ready instances at A&Es are more likely to be the worst on file this winter as hospitals battle to deal with demand attributable to flu, COVID and Strep A.
Figures from NHS England present that final month, round 37,837 sufferers waited greater than 12 hours in A&E for a choice to be admitted to a hospital division – up by nearly 355% in comparison with the earlier yr.
And quite a few trusts have now declared “critical incidents”, together with University Hospitals North Midlands (UHNM) – which runs Royal Stoke University Hospital – in addition to South Western Ambulance Service, University Hospitals Trust Leicester, Hampshire and Isle of Wight, Buckinghamshire Healthcare, and University Hospitals of North Midlands.
St John Ambulance’s Mike Gibbons has requested for individuals to not “get drunk for the sake of it” once they head out for New Year’s Eve to keep away from growing stress on already struggling providers.
‘Severe stress’
Medical director of the UHNM belief, Dr Matthew Lewis, mentioned there’s “extremely high demand” for all of its providers, as witnessed by Sky News, saying each Royal Stoke University Hospital and County Hospital in Stafford had been “under severe and sustained pressure over the Christmas period”.
And he mentioned the “challenging situation” was more likely to proceed over the New Year financial institution vacation interval, with A&E hardest hit attributable to an absence of beds and waits of longer than 12 hours for some sufferers.
Dr Lewis mentioned the hospital can be opening further beds and growing medical and nursing shifts all through the financial institution vacation interval, including: “We will always do our best for patients and keep patients safe and locally we are working with our NHS and local authority partners to put in place measures to ensure that people who need hospital and emergency care can get treatment quickly and to identify and utilise any additional capacity to allow us to discharge patients and free up our beds.
“We proceed to ask the general public to assist us by solely utilizing A&E in a critical or life threatening emergency and for his or her assist after we’re discharging their mates or family members to make sure they’re picked up from hospital as quickly as attainable and have all the things they want at house.”
West Midlands Ambulance Service, which covers Royal Stoke University Hospital, confirmed the figures of queuing vehicles, with a spokesman telling Sky News: “The ambulance service depends on every a part of the well being and social care system working collectively in order that our ambulances can get to sufferers locally rapidly.
“Sadly, the pressures we are seeing in health and social care lead to long hospital handover delays with our crews left caring for patients that need admitting to hospital rather than responding to the next call.
“The result’s that our crews are delayed reaching sufferers.”
The spokesman added that the service was “working extremely exhausting with all of our NHS and social care companions to forestall these delays, new methods to securely hand over sufferers rapidly in order that our crews can reply extra quickly and save extra lives”.
Source: information.sky.com”