Plymouth teen praises Derriford Hospital staff after 'nightmare' IT failure in emergency department
Toby Dixon told ITV News' Sam Blackledge about his experience at Derriford Hospital.
A teenager from Plymouth who was admitted to Derriford Hospital's emergency department during a recent major IT failure has praised staff for doing their best to cope.
Toby Dixon says his 'eye-opening' experience showed how the city's healthcare system is struggling to keep up.
His mum Sara said something needs to change, or things will get worse.
Toby, 18, was admitted to the hospital on 4 April this year as the trust declared a critical incident and said IT issues were impacting on some key clinical systems.
Sara said she was shocked by what she saw.
"The queue was out the door, between 70 and 100 people. There was a two hour and 40 minute wait for triage, and nearly a nine-hour wait just to see a doctor.
"I was gobsmacked. It was 8.30pm and to think that we were maybe not going to see a doctor until the morning....I was thinking please God, let's pray that we get seen a bit sooner."
Toby said staff were "doing the best they could" in the circumstances, resorting to using whiteboards and paper and pens instead of computers.
Chief nurse Darryn Allcorn said: "We have a lot of electronic systems, so at any given time we know exactly where people are in the building digitally, we can visualise wards, we can visualise the emergency department.
"When we lose our IT, we then have to go on to paper systems. So while we can maintain patient safety, communication across the hospital takes much more time."
Chief operating officer Jo Beer said: "There is no easy answer. ED is full. It's crowded. It is a poor experience for patients.
"They are waiting too long to get into the department or too long to move into a bed in the hospital, and that can't be a great experience.
"Some of our challenges are the mismatch between the number of people waiting to get into the hospital - either for emergency care or for serious planned surgery or investigations - on balance with the people who are leaving hospital and fit to go home.
"It's the time of year where we see a reduction in demand, a reduction in pressures, and we've felt that for two weeks, and that has meant we've had a lower level of occupancy.
"We've worked at such a high level of pressure for so long that we've slickened a lot of our processes."
Within the next two weeks a new ward will open with 23 beds in it, and a new urgent treatment centre will take some pressure off the emergency department.