Madam, – I wish to thank Una McCaffrey for her article (“My spirit was broken and the tears began to flow”, HEALTHplus, March 2nd). She wrote about what was clearly a hugely distressing experience in a hospital emergency department. An experience that I share every day of my working life.
No patient sick enough to be admitted to hospital should have to wait for a hospital bed on a chair, but this is the daily reality for patients. Previous research from emergency departments shows that one quarter of the patient’s stay is taken up by the evaluation and initial management by the emergency department staff. The rest is accounted for by the very long wait for a bed in a ward.
I was saddened to note that the emergency department was referred to as “a sinking ship”. Emergency departments nationally are the over-loaded lifeboats of a health service at sea that allows lack of capacity in the acute hospital system to be evidenced by massive and dangerous overcrowding of emergency departments.
It would be far safer to have patients requiring emergency admission moved to extra beds in wards instead of having all such patients housed in emergency departments that are designed to provide emergency care. It would be better yet to have sufficient beds in the acute hospital system. – Yours, etc,