Special report: It is only October, but the winter crisis has well and truly arrived in Merseyside’s hospitals
NHS crisis as people lying across floors waiting for beds
In a hospital in Liverpool, people are lying across the floor, some of them are asleep as they wait for a bed on one of the hospital’s wards. One woman has been in Accident & Emergency (A&E) for 30 hours, she will wait another 17 in this tiny room full of people.
Across the water in Wirral, a healthcare nurse cries all the way home from her shift, which should have finished three hours ago. She has spent another day trying to manage an impossible number of patients with nowhere for them to go.
In the same hospital, the A&E department is overflowing with patients. Some are forced to wait for 10 hours in the back of an ambulance parked up outside. This is the reality facing Merseyside’s hospitals as the region heads into another potentially devastating winter. It is still October and the situation is already beyond desperate.
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Laura Jones was shocked at what she saw when she walked into the A&E department of the Royal Liverpool Hospital earlier this month. She had been suffering with back pains and her GP, suspecting a water infection, sent her to the emergency room at the city centre hospital.
“It was absolutely chocka in there,” explains the 37-year-old. “There were people sitting on the floor outside and others lying asleep on the floor inside.” Ms Jones would experience a huge wait in these surroundings, waiting for nearly 30 hours before being taken to another unit.
But while she hoped she was being moved to a bed on a ward, that was not the case. “I was put in a small room where there were five other people who were all sleeping on chairs and on the floor,” she recounts. “The people in that room said they had been in there for 20 hours already. I had to sleep in there with them with nothing but a pillow on the floor. It was horrendous.” She remained in the cramped room for a further 17 hours before finally making it onto a ward.
The Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation said Ms Jones was provided with active treatment and care, including medication and painkillers, during her lengthy wait in A&E and said she was triaged within 20 minutes of arrival and first saw a doctor after 4.5 hours. But the trust has apologised to patients facing long waits.
The trust said the small room Ms Jones was moved to, which she has shared video footage of, is called a Clinical Decision Unit, where non-elective patients undergoing diagnostic tests are taken. Trust records show two other patients were in the room with her, potentially with friends and family.
Speaking about her experiences in hospital, Ms Jones adds: “Those days were totally traumatising for me. It was horrendous, it was chaos. There were just corridors full of sick people. It makes me think the NHS is doomed to be honest. It was one of the worst experiences of my life and makes me scared to go to hospital again.”
A spokesperson at Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said: “Patient safety is our priority. People with serious medical emergencies will always be prioritised for treatment and our clinical teams are working incredibly hard to ensure that all our patients are assessed, monitored and provided with safe clinical care, whilst they await tests and if necessary, a bed on a hospital ward.
“Demand for hospital beds remains high. We’d like to apologise to patients who may experience long waits and want to reassure them that we strive to provide the best possible standards of clinical care.”
With winter approaching, the feeling of doom is not limited to Liverpool’s hospitals. Over in Wirral, Arrowe Park Hospital is already experiencing a major crisis.
The trust which manages the hospital recently declared an internal critical incident due to what was described as “the ongoing, unprecedented demand” at Arrowe Park’s emergency department, a demand, the hospital said was, “more than we have experienced in any winter period.” Remember, we are only in October.
Trust leaders appeared at a Wirral Council meeting last week to discuss the crisis. Medical director Nikki Stevenson told the meeting that the Wirral has seen a 20% increase in ambulances transporting patients to hospital, adding: “No other hospital has seen that so there’s something that’s going on there so we’re just trying to understand what it is.”
Reports from paramedics have described how Arrowe Park’s corridors are already “overflowing with patients”, with some people being left in ambulances for as long as 10 hours. One paramedic told the BBC: “”It is doomed for winter as it is categorically not coping now.” And its not just the hospital’s emergency room that is suffering.
“Summer was so hard, it has just been non-stop,” explains a healthcare worker in a surgical department. “We have patients who we can’t move on for weeks and months because there aren’t places in care homes and there just aren’t any social workers to assess them. They just don’t exist.
“We just don’t have enough staff to deal with how acute the ward has become. Every type of staff member you can imagine, we don’t have enough of them. It feels right now like only the basics can get done.”
The devastated woman holds back tears as she adds: “I came home at 11pm last night, my shift should have finished at 8.15pm, I cried for the last 20 minutes and I cried all the way home. I still believe in nursing and I want to be an amazing nurse but at the moment I can’t because of how hard things are and I have no faith at all that anything will get better.”
“We should be excited that people are now living longer with previously life-limiting or fatal conditions, but currently it means that they are just fighting for care for the rest of their lives. The NHS needs more money and I believe that money exists.”
A Wirral University Teaching Hospital spokesperson said: “Patient safety is the top priority of the Trust and we are consistently monitoring the level of demand across our hospital. There have been extremely high levels of people attending our Emergency Department over the last week who are in need of urgent care and therefore a range of measures have been implemented to ensure those patients are seen as early as possible.”
NHS bosses in Merseyside say they are expecting significant pressures this winter, with rising levels of ill health exacerbated by the colder weather causing high demand for services. They say they have plans in place but need the public to also play their part.
A spokesperson for NHS Cheshire and Merseyside said: “The NHS in Cheshire and Merseyside has tried and tested plans to help manage these periods of high pressure, and ensuring safe care for patients continues to be our first priority. We are working closely with local NHS Trusts and other partners across health and social care to make sure that all possible capacity is effectively utilised, in order to help reduce delays to care.
“The public can also play their part by taking simple measures to stay well this winter, such as getting winter vaccines when invited to, keeping warm, staying active, looking out for others, and choosing the right service when they need help or advice.
“Please remember that A&E should only be used for life-threatening illnesses and injuries. For conditions which are less urgent, please use NHS 111, or consider visiting a local pharmacy, walk-in centre or GP practice for support instead.”
