Emergency departments were not set up to look after the sick for days on end. It’s a shambolic situation
I did my first on-call shift of the new year this week, in an NHS that is apparently not in crisis and is getting all the funding it needs.
For the first time, I came on in the morning to find patients on our medical admission list from overnight still waiting in ambulances. These patients, one of whom had arrived more than eight hours earlier, would have been seen by an A&E nurse, had bloods and observations taken, and been assessed by a doctor and the medical team to confirm that admission was really needed. They were all in the back ambulances, with paramedic crews unable to go back out on the road. I have never seen patients get that far into the hospital system without physically entering the building.
