Action Needed To Deal With Overcrowded A&E

A councillor who was taken to hospital by ambulance is urging NHS bosses to ensure other patients have a better experience than she did.

Labour councillor Amanda Grimshaw spoke out after her experience of waiting in the corridor at the accident and emergency (A&E) department at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton.

Councillor Grimshaw plans to propose a motion at a Brighton and Hove City Council meeting on Thursday (30 January).

She aims to call on the University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust to add short-term capacity to the Royal Sussex A&E while a new unit is created.

And she wants to know when the hospital will have a new A&E department and to push for more people to have their vaccine jabs to protect against flu, coronavirus and other respiratory diseases.

Councillor Grimshaw decided to speak out after she was taken by ambulance to the Royal Sussex A&E after an unexpected medical emergency.

Paramedics spent 45 minutes with her until she was handed over to a doctor.

She said that she then spent at least three hours waiting on a trolley.

She was in a corridor and was shocked to see that it was full of elderly and frail people on trolleys on a late afternoon during the week.

Councillor Grimshaw said:

“Some were desperate for the toilet but there are not able to walk to the toilet.

“I witnessed an elderly man having to pee in public. I thought that was absolutely awful.

“There were so many people in the cubicles and the curtains were open. I could see the cubicles were jammed with people as well as the corridors.

“I was getting angrier and angrier. I had a test, carried out in a public area, but then there was a shift change. No one came to speak to me. I wasn’t spoken to by a doctor.

“Eventually, I said: ‘I’m going home.’ I was advised not to. The next day I called my doctor as I felt too unwell to go back to A&E and wait for up to 24 hours.”

Councillor Grimshaw, who has since had further tests through her doctor’s surgery, said that one of her frustrations with the hospital was that the new Louisa Martindale Building had not relieved the pressure on the cramped A&E.

She said:

“I was chatting with the paramedics who were wonderful. We were talking about the reception and all the space and yet it’s carnage up the top.

“But they can’t turn it into A&E because that’s not what the funding was for. Everyone was saying in A&E it is utter carnage when downstairs is like a cathedral.”

Since her emergency, Councillor Grimshaw said that had learnt that more consultants were available during the day to help people in A&E which is improving the situation and ensuring sepsis patients are treated quickly.

She said:

“I’m not moaning about the staff. They’re working so hard. But where do we go from here if you’re too ill for A&E? I’m lucky my doctor is amazing.

“What I want to know is when is the new A&E coming? Where and when? The situation now is not sustainable.”

She plans to ask fellow councillors to note that although the Royal Sussex is a regional trauma centre, it has insufficient space, creating a stressful and overcrowded environment in A&E.

And she said the difficulty in accessing a doctor in the eastern part of Brighton and Hove meant that A&E and the urgent care centre effectively functioned as primary care centres.

With the winter increase in infectious diseases, more people were being admitted to hospital, she said, and infection control measures sometimes required the temporary closure of wards.

Her proposed motion asks the leader of the council to write to the trust asking for a contingency plan to increase capacity and a futureproof new A&E.

She also wants council officials to work with the NHS to improve vaccination uptake.

University Hospitals Sussex chief executive George Findlay said:

“We are all acutely aware that some people are spending too long in A&E in our hospitals.

“I apologise to anyone who has had a poor experience and fully accept that some of the waiting times are not acceptable.

“Pressure is always high but in winter it is even more difficult to find beds for the large numbers of frail and poorly people arriving at A&E who need to be admitted into hospital.”

Dr Findlay added:

“Our teams are making changes to try to ease congestion in our emergency departments and their efforts mean that our patient feedback is better than national averages.

“We are also working with partners to try to better manage the number of people coming to A&E and to speed up the process to move people out of hospital when they no longer need our care.

“There have been some encouraging signs of progress in recent weeks but we know the situation is still very difficult.”

The full council is due to meet at Hove Town Hall at 4.30pm on Thursday (30 January).

The meeting is scheduled to be webcast on the council’s website.