When patients in our region are waiting up to 50 hours for a bed, when fights break out in waiting rooms, when people leave in despair rather than be seen – this is not ‘just winter’. This is a system that has failed, and one we must stop tolerating
Visit A&E in Manchester at the moment and you’ll hear the quiet hum of collective despair among those waiting. How long have you been here? Has anyone even moved? Conversations aren’t about symptoms, they’re not generally occupied with worry or reassurance – thoughts are all focused on The Wait.
The Manchester Evening News has heard reports that the wait for a bed in some areas is approaching 50 hours. Spending two days in a boiling hot A&E waiting to be seen is unlikely to make you feel any better, and it’s a profound failure of our health service.
A&E is packed to the rafters, there’s limited space to sit and the attendees are a chaotic mixture of people with severe, urgent conditions and others who simply have no option but to come to hospital because they can’t get in to see a GP.
Comfort is unlikely, hydration isn’t guaranteed and dignity is rarer than a waiting time target being hit. Everyone is sitting marinating in the same sense of hopelessness and fetid air.
One of our reporters who recently spent a sleepless night waiting in A&E described quasi-apocalyptic scenes. Too many patients, not enough time and not enough space. After triage you disappear into a weird fluorescent void with limited updates, no sense of progress and frequently a febrile and occasionally violent atmosphere that feels neither like a safe space or a place to get better.
It is therefore maddening that when reporters ask questions about the chaos and failure we’re told ‘well it’s winter’. The annual A&E winter crisis, caused by virulent, but well-anticipated viral outbreaks, has become normalised. But it really shouldn’t be.
Imagine treating any other essential service like this. “Oh yes, everything collapses for four months a year, but you know – it’s the seasons.”
These days you can mark the winter crisis in A&E on a calendar. Isn’t it time then that it was addressed properly? The extraordinary staff in our hospitals are stretched to breaking point, they are the best asset the organisation has and they’re driven to despair.
We’ve heard reports of nurses in tears while they apologise for waiting times, and we’ve all seen exhausted medical staff rushing around desperately trying to treat those that need it.
It’s not just patients that are suffering.
The time when the government and health leaders got a grip on A&E is now long past. The winter crisis doesn’t have to be inevitable. This isn’t a weather problem. It’s a system problem. A planning problem. A political problem. A decades-long problem.
We should never accept 50-hour waits, crowded A&Es with people dying in corridors, and violent and unpredictable environments where patients and staff are unsafe.
Manchester deserves so much better. That this has been accepted as the normal state of affairs is a profound failure. It’s time to fix it.