Royal Preston Hospital: Staff in tears as patients 'wait days for beds'

Senior staff at the Royal Preston Hospital say the A&E unit is in a "precarious situation"

A&E patients are routinely waiting more than two days for a bed and dying without dignity, managers have warned.

Five senior staff at The Royal Preston Hospital have written to the Lancashire Teaching Hospitals Trust reporting how employees have been left in tears.

Ambulances regularly wait more than four hours to handover patients because there is no space on the wards, the letter said.

The trust said staff and patient welfare was its priority.

The letter, signed by the clinical director Graham Ellis, the matron, two managers and the business manager, was first revealed by the Health Service Journal.

"We have witnessed senior experienced staff crying with frustration and anger as they have had to resuscitate patients in the waiting room, examine in the viewing room and CT changing room, seen patients leave the department as they have been pulled out of a cubicle to allow someone more unwell to be treated in their former space and patients die without the dignity of privacy," it said.

'Mentally drained'

The signatories highlighted plummeting staff morale at the Emergency Department's "increasingly precarious" situation.

They said that for the past few months more than 50 patients have been regularly waiting for a bed and "that wait being in excess of 60 hours".

They continued: "This means that at most times there is limited or no space to accommodate new acutely ill patients causing ambulance handover delays of over four hours and delay in treatment.

"Patients, often elderly with multiple co-morbidities, have to sit in the waiting room, some for over 24 hours waiting for a cubicle space and treatment.

"Patients wait outside the department as there is no space to socially distance in the waiting room."

Staff are "mentally drained and despite their best efforts have seen patients suffer and have received negative comments from distraught relatives and carers", the letter claimed.

The A&E managers argue that they are expected to take patients even when other wards close their doors.

A statement from trust's chief executive, Kevin McGee, said: "The safety of patients and the welfare of staff remain the trust's top priorities but like NHS providers across the country, our hospitals have continued to sustain unprecedented pressure which has been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic."

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