An elderly patient died while sitting in a chair waiting for treatment at the Royal Victoria Hospital.
It is understood members of the public alerted staff to the unexpected death as the hospital came under extreme pressure on Friday night.
At the time she was in a sub-waiting area of the ‘majors’ section of the emergency department.
That is a part of A&E where patients who are seriously ill, but not in immediate danger of dying, receive treatment.
The sub-waiting area at the Royal is a room within ‘majors’ used for those who have been assessed as able to sit up and do not require a trolley.
It is not known whether a decision had been made to admit the woman, or whether any delay in being seen contributed to the death.
But it has raised serious concerns over the dignity of seriously-ill patients and those receiving end-of-life care.
Staff working on Friday night are understood to have been left highly distressed by the incident.
The Belfast Trust said: “Belfast Trust would like to send our condolences to this patient’s family, our thoughts are with them at this difficult time.
“We have reviewed this patient’s care and spoken to their family. Out of respect for the patient’s family, we will not make any further comment.”
The tragic case occurred as fears grow over the ability of the health service to cope in the coming months after the Northern Trust declared a major incident and closed its emergency department for a period on Saturday night.
The unprecedented measure was put in place after the unit became overwhelmed by the number of critically-ill patients arriving.
At the time there were 131 patients in A&E and more than 60 waiting to be admitted to a ward.
Rita Devlin, director of the Royal College of Nursing in Northern Ireland, said: “If this is not a wake-up call then I don’t know what is.
“This is the worst I have ever seen the health service — for an emergency department to tell people not to come under any circumstance, I would say the system hasn’t just toppled over, it’s on life support.
“How bad do things have to be before our politicians sit up, pay attention and do something to fix this?
“Can they not have their ideology and at the same time go on with governing the country?”
Ms Devlin said nursing staff, particularly those in A&E, are consistently working under intolerable pressure and stress.
She has visited a number of emergency departments in recent weeks and has been horrified by the conditions in which nurses are operating.
“I look around at the sea of trolleys and all I can ask is how they can keep their patients safe, but that’s their reality day after day,” she said.
Awful stuff.
My disabled da was waiting on a chair in Beaumount A&E for 14 hours last week to get an emergency blood transfusion.
24 hours my mam was waiting on a chair in Beaumont less than two weeks ago after losing all power in her right arm. First doctor she saw gave her some cheek asking why she didn’t contact a private clinic she’d been to before and my mam said after seeing her GP she was to go straight to A&E based on the sudden loss of power.
11 days later now and she’s recovering from surgery last Monday after they found a brain tumor and currently waiting on biopsy results. Still no movement in right arm or leg.
With how quick movement deteriorated god knows what getting sent home to wait weeks for a private appointment would have done.
I have worked in Emergency Care in the North and left due to how overstretched it was. I was finding working in conditions like these and not being able to give patients the care and dignity they deserve was impacting my mental health. It was a difficult decision to make as I truly loved Emergency Medicine.
I have a great deal of anxiety this coming winter or even next summer (as frankly there has been no let up between seasons in more recent years), due to the worry that my parents or elderly relatives may not receive optimal treatment.
It’s utterly depressing because we have seen a total collapse in Emergency and Primary, Secondary and Social care up here. We do not have enough GP’s or community/district nurses or other services like mental health access, so many people who are ill and desperate but not in need of emergency care attend A&E feeling there’s nowhere else to go. We do not have enough care homes or social structures to get patients out of wards and free up space for patients to leave A&E so the floors are jammed with trolleys. We have patients on surgery waiting lists or specialist lists to see a neurologists for 5 years and their chronic symptoms have no end in sight without intervention. For example a person waiting to get a gallbladder removed may attend A&E several times with abdominal pain before they finally go septic and require surgical removal. The result of these factors means hundreds of people of all severity illness left in disarray for A&E to hold on to. The nurses, health care assistants and doctors are overwhelmed by the sheer number of patients in A&E and many competent and dedicated staff have finally started leaving like I have. There’s a huge retention crisis. New starts are fresh out of uni or training and face a baptism of fire and leave at the earliest opportunity.
Without a radical overhaul there is no way out of this. This will not happen without Stormount. With Stormount I doubt we could fix it as the Tories are unlikely going to pump any more money into our local NHS as we already receive the highest funding with the least to show in terms of devolved areas. The only solution is now for more and more people to go private/get insurance to take pressure off the public system, which many commentators have said for over a decade has been the Conservative party plan.
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Article:
An elderly patient died while sitting in a chair waiting for treatment at the Royal Victoria Hospital.
It is understood members of the public alerted staff to the unexpected death as the hospital came under extreme pressure on Friday night.
At the time she was in a sub-waiting area of the ‘majors’ section of the emergency department.
That is a part of A&E where patients who are seriously ill, but not in immediate danger of dying, receive treatment.
The sub-waiting area at the Royal is a room within ‘majors’ used for those who have been assessed as able to sit up and do not require a trolley.
It is not known whether a decision had been made to admit the woman, or whether any delay in being seen contributed to the death.
But it has raised serious concerns over the dignity of seriously-ill patients and those receiving end-of-life care.
Staff working on Friday night are understood to have been left highly distressed by the incident.
The Belfast Trust said: “Belfast Trust would like to send our condolences to this patient’s family, our thoughts are with them at this difficult time.
“We have reviewed this patient’s care and spoken to their family. Out of respect for the patient’s family, we will not make any further comment.”
The tragic case occurred as fears grow over the ability of the health service to cope in the coming months after the Northern Trust declared a major incident and closed its emergency department for a period on Saturday night.
The unprecedented measure was put in place after the unit became overwhelmed by the number of critically-ill patients arriving.
At the time there were 131 patients in A&E and more than 60 waiting to be admitted to a ward.
Rita Devlin, director of the Royal College of Nursing in Northern Ireland, said: “If this is not a wake-up call then I don’t know what is.
“This is the worst I have ever seen the health service — for an emergency department to tell people not to come under any circumstance, I would say the system hasn’t just toppled over, it’s on life support.
“How bad do things have to be before our politicians sit up, pay attention and do something to fix this?
“Can they not have their ideology and at the same time go on with governing the country?”
Ms Devlin said nursing staff, particularly those in A&E, are consistently working under intolerable pressure and stress.
She has visited a number of emergency departments in recent weeks and has been horrified by the conditions in which nurses are operating.
“I look around at the sea of trolleys and all I can ask is how they can keep their patients safe, but that’s their reality day after day,” she said.
Awful stuff.
My disabled da was waiting on a chair in Beaumount A&E for 14 hours last week to get an emergency blood transfusion.
24 hours my mam was waiting on a chair in Beaumont less than two weeks ago after losing all power in her right arm. First doctor she saw gave her some cheek asking why she didn’t contact a private clinic she’d been to before and my mam said after seeing her GP she was to go straight to A&E based on the sudden loss of power.
11 days later now and she’s recovering from surgery last Monday after they found a brain tumor and currently waiting on biopsy results. Still no movement in right arm or leg.
With how quick movement deteriorated god knows what getting sent home to wait weeks for a private appointment would have done.
I have worked in Emergency Care in the North and left due to how overstretched it was. I was finding working in conditions like these and not being able to give patients the care and dignity they deserve was impacting my mental health. It was a difficult decision to make as I truly loved Emergency Medicine.
I have a great deal of anxiety this coming winter or even next summer (as frankly there has been no let up between seasons in more recent years), due to the worry that my parents or elderly relatives may not receive optimal treatment.
It’s utterly depressing because we have seen a total collapse in Emergency and Primary, Secondary and Social care up here. We do not have enough GP’s or community/district nurses or other services like mental health access, so many people who are ill and desperate but not in need of emergency care attend A&E feeling there’s nowhere else to go. We do not have enough care homes or social structures to get patients out of wards and free up space for patients to leave A&E so the floors are jammed with trolleys. We have patients on surgery waiting lists or specialist lists to see a neurologists for 5 years and their chronic symptoms have no end in sight without intervention. For example a person waiting to get a gallbladder removed may attend A&E several times with abdominal pain before they finally go septic and require surgical removal. The result of these factors means hundreds of people of all severity illness left in disarray for A&E to hold on to. The nurses, health care assistants and doctors are overwhelmed by the sheer number of patients in A&E and many competent and dedicated staff have finally started leaving like I have. There’s a huge retention crisis. New starts are fresh out of uni or training and face a baptism of fire and leave at the earliest opportunity.
Without a radical overhaul there is no way out of this. This will not happen without Stormount. With Stormount I doubt we could fix it as the Tories are unlikely going to pump any more money into our local NHS as we already receive the highest funding with the least to show in terms of devolved areas. The only solution is now for more and more people to go private/get insurance to take pressure off the public system, which many commentators have said for over a decade has been the Conservative party plan.