Doctor makes frank address to patients in pressure-hit A&E

A doctor has had to speak frankly with people waiting for long periods in the A&E of Antrim Area Hospital to ask for patience as staff faced immense pressure.

On Tuesday at the busy hospital, the doctor in charge of the emergency department had to face more than one hundred people waiting to tell them “I don’t have 100 doctors, I don’t have 50 - I have eight”.

At that stage 13 people had been waiting more than 12 hours to be seen.

Wednesday has seen similar scenes as the hospital remains very busy.

Seamus O'Reilly, Medical Director of the Northern Health Trust, said: “At that particular stage yesterday, the department was under immense pressure and he did what he felt was right, in other words he went out to tell the patients why they were waiting long periods of time, what they could expect, he was offering them an opportunity to come up to the triage nurse to decide whether they should stay or whether they should go elsewhere.

Mr O'Reilly said staff are not at breaking point, he described them as “true professionals” working very hard in teams to the best of their ability and well supported by management.

A&E's across the region are under more strain as they deal with problems arising from an aging population and winter pressures.

When asked whether GPs were too quick to refer patients to A&E - he said: “GPs do have to refer to patients to the emergency department, sometimes because they cannot get the investigation, the treatment or the assessment elsewhere.

“So what this tells me is that we as a system need to change how we do things and I hope that the unscheduled care review which is presently being carried out, will give us some answers.

“We will have the early report in January 2020 and following that a period of consultation, I think we will redesign our model of urgent and emergency care, there has to be change, there has to be transformation.”