Staff at a Merseyside hospital told the ECHO that an older woman died without being tended to by exhausted and overrun NHS teams at a hospital experiencing overwhelming demand
Arrowe Park Hospital in Wirral(Image: Andrew Teebay Liverpool Echo)
A woman was left to die alone on a trolley in the corridor of an overwhelmed Merseyside A&E department, where exhausted staff were unable to provide care for her. The ECHO has heard from staff working in Arrowe Park Hospital’s emergency department, who say they have reached breaking point as they continue to be overrun with patients they can no longer safely treat appropriately.
The hospital is run by the Wirral University Teaching Hospital Trust (WUTH), who said the hospital’s A&E department is experiencing “extremely high demand” at present, with the numbers of people attending 30% higher than expected at this time of year. Daily attendances are in excess of 330, peaking at 370 on certain days in December.
Staff working in the department said the most harrowing impact of this demand came at the start of the past week, when an elderly lady was brought in by an ambulance and – as is unfortunately now a regularity – placed on a trolley in a packed corridor of the hospital.
Tragically, staff said that they were so stretched that the woman died alone without being seen to by the overrun team.
One staff member said: “We don’t usually hold patients in the back of ambulances, but in the past two weeks, things have been so bad it has been happening because there has just been no space, no trolleys to put them on and no staff to accept them.
“This woman was in the back of an ambulance and they came in, early hours of the morning and because it wasn’t staffed, she died, on her own, on the corridor. She was an older lady.
“My colleagues were absolute distraught. They were broken hearted.”
She added: “I am surprised it has taken this long for this to happen and it is bound to happen again. We are failing our patients and they are coming to harm.”
Speaking more generally about the winter within the department, an A&E staff member told the ECHO: “This winter has been absolutely awful. We have got more and more patients on corridors, we haven’t got enough staff to cover these corridors, so patients sometimes have no one caring for them.
“We are just overwhelmed with the number of patients. The numbers are so high and the skill mix we have is so poor. We have been overstretched. We can have 40-50 patients on a corridor or in escalation areas at times. They just keep opening more areas.
“We are coming in and expected to look after 10 or 12 patients, it is supposed to be one to four. How are you supposed to nurse 10-12 patients on a corridor?”
They added: “It is horrific in A&E, it is just non-stop. At one point we had 102 patients waiting for a bed, with more than 200 in the department. Its only built for 50-60 patients. We have patients sitting on the floor, lying down on the corridor with coats over their heads, how is that right in this day and age?”
Staff said in a bid to address the critical situation, hospital bosses have opened a new medical ward within the department, but they said this has actually just stretched exhausted staff even more.
One staff member said: “Because patients are there for so long they have changed it into a ward, but its not a functional ward because it hasn’t got the stuff a ward has.
Arrowe Park Hospital, Wirral(Image: Liverpool Echo)
“It is basically a holding area for our patients, they are still in our department and we still have to look after them.”
The stress of the situation in the emergency department has led to many senior and qualified staff members being off with work-related stress, meaning there is an increasing reliance on newly qualified and agency staff.
One staff member said: “Morale is at the lowest it has ever been. So many people have gone off with stress. I am just about clinging on. There have been a couple of times recently I have thought I don’t know how much longer I can stay here, that breaks my heart.”
One reason staff are being pushed over the edge is the abuse they are receiving from frustrated patients waiting enormous amounts of time to be seen.
The staff member added: “It is normal to have one nurse covering the A&E waiting room, which can be 70-80 people and so the poor nurse is trying to do medications and they are being surrounded by frustrated people. It is intimidating. It is frightening. Some staff won’t do it, they can’t cope.”
“It’s heartbreaking for us, there are people breaking down in tears every single shift. We have asked for security to come and do walkabouts because it is so bad. People are saying “you are supposed to care, why are you leaving us like this?”
While staff in Arrowe Park accept the wider NHS crisis means these grim scenes are not limited to their own A&E department, they want to see and hear more from trust leaders about how the current crisis will be tackled. The hospital’s urgent and emergency services remain rated as ‘requires improvement’ by the Care Quality Commission.
One NHS staff member on the ground said: “We keep putting incident forms in, we have gone to our team leaders. We know they have been having meetings with the unions and the management. But nothing has changed. Well it has, it is getting worse.
“I don’t know what the answer is, but that lady dying on a corridor is the last straw. Something has to change. Patients are coming to harm, our staff are broken, our department is non-functional. The trust needs to sort this out.”
For its part, the Wirral University Teaching Hospital trust said that ensuring patients receive safe care is its “top priority” and that its staff are working “exceptionally hard during an extremely busy time.”
The trust said it is unable to comment on circumstances involving individual patients, but confirmed its emergency department is experiencing “extremely high demand.”
A spokesperson said: “Unfortunately, this has resulted in longer waits and at times, patients being cared for on the corridor which is a challenge experienced across the NHS. To support this, we have opened extra beds and wards across the hospital with the appropriate staffing in place. Importantly this enables us to release ambulance crews back into the community to respond to the additional demand.
“As safety is our top priority, we actively encourage staff to raise incident forms to report challenges, concerns or areas of good practice, and all incidents are investigated with appropriate action and any learning taken. Our teams dynamically monitor demand and staffing levels in the department and across the site with senior nursing and medical oversight.
“We are working hard with all other health care partners to both discharge patients who no longer require our care and navigate appropriate patients to alternative healthcare settings where their needs may be better served, and to improve patient flow through the hospital helping to reduce waiting times in the Emergency Department.
The spokesperson added: “To ensure we are able to focus on those patients in most urgent need, we urge people to only attend the Emergency Department if they have an emergency.
“At this time of year, it is also important that the public are caring for their health and wellbeing by having their vaccinations, staying warm and hydrated and also looking out for vulnerable people.”