For most people, the Christmas season is synonymous with joy, relaxation and over-indulgence. However, although the streets are very quiet, the hustle and bustle of Britain’s hospitals intensifies.
Accident and Emergency departments and wards continue to treat patients, as the NHS doesn’t have any holidays. The workforce of paramedics, nurses, doctors, cleaners and caretakers continues to work through the season of celebration, on call for cases of food poisoning, alcohol or kitchen-related injuries and winter illnesses.
When one of many possible festive mishaps occurs, the knee-jerk reaction is often to visit A&E, but this is not always the best idea- due to pre-existing pressures on A&E departments across the country and the increased demand over the Christmas period, patients in need of the most urgent care are not getting the treatment they require early enough as the demand is too high. Tragically, this can lead to avoidable deaths, as there is a lack of resources in the system- in December 2016, 142 A&E departments had no choice but to turn patients away, whilst others 'had to wait for hours on end'.
The 111-phone line is available for more minor issues, which do not require a visit to A&E. The line offers medical advice from trained nurses and is very useful for reducing the strain on A&E departments and reported its busiest week ever, with 457,084 calls in the week ending on the first day of 2017. This was an increase of 6% from the same period the previous year. Hospital admissions also peaked over December 27/28, with 60,000 patients. There was a total of 372,000 attendances, 40,000 more than the previous week.
50 of England’s 152 NHS acute hospital trusts declared alert in the month of December, with 34 hospitals experiencing major problems with demand. Following cuts to funding, many A&E departments in the country have even been forced to close over recent years. This only intensifies the strain on those that remain, one of which belongs to Whipps Cross University Hospital. Since being placed on ‘special measures’ by the Care Quality Commission in 2014, improvements have been made and it has been confirmed that the urgent care unit in Waltham Forest’s only general hospital will not be closed down and will continue to treat patients.
