A&E units close to collapse

CASUALTY departments are on the brink of collapse and hundreds of doctors should be drafted from other duties to avert an immediate crisis, Britain’s most senior Accident & Emergency doctor has said.

Dr Cliff Mann said hospitals across the country were being overwhelmed by “unprecedented” levels of pressure and overcrowding amid desperate shortages of medics.

At several NHS trusts, more than half of A&E shifts for doctors have gone unfilled since a cap on spending on locum medics was introduced, the President of the College of Emergency Medicine said.

In an extraordinary intervention, he urged health officials to now divert hundreds of doctors from other hospital duties to get “all hands on deck” and ensure that casualty departments could operate safely.

In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, Dr Mann said overcrowding in A&Es had reached “unacceptable” levels as he called for urgent “exceptional measures” in order to protect the public. Dr Mann said hospitals had been under

extreme strain despite a mild winter, but that the situation was rapidly escalating.

He told this newspaper: “The pressures have become unrelenting. In recent days I’ve been contacted by a number of senior doctors, medical directors, high-level people, who are saying the situation now is like nothing they’ve seen before.

“One medical director was describing scenes at 4am, endlessly firefighting, trying to keep people alive in corridors. My own hospital had the busiest day I had ever experienced two weeks ago – these are situations where every time you turn round, there are another four ambulances queueing.”

He said A&E doctors were doing their best, but could not guarantee safety in such circumstances.

“We are not delivering best care and on some occasions we are not delivering safe care,” he warned.

The senior doctor, who works as a consultant in Taunton, Somerset said medics should now be drafted from every department which could spare them, to prop up A&Es.

“At the moment we just have to deal with this sheer volume of patients, the pressures are overwhelming,” he said. “We just need more hands on deck to cope.”

A spokesman for NHS England said: “A&E visits are up sharply since Christmas but fortunately the number of A&E trolley waits is down compared with last winter. In fact fewer hospitals have reported serious operational issues, but winter has bitten later this year and following renewed pressures in January and February, detailed plans are being put in place for Easter to ensure good service availability over the four day bank holiday.”

A Department of Health spokesman said: “The NHS is coping well in the face of exceptional demand. We are committed to delivering a safer sevenday NHS which is why we have invested £10bn to fund the NHS’s own plan to transform services in the future.” The Daily Telegraph, 111 Buckingham Palace Road, London, SW1W 0DT