PATIENTS in A&E face serious complications from missing doses of prescription medicines while waiting days to be seen, a new report warns.<\/p>\n
The Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) study, released today,\u00a0found that more than half of patients are not identified as being on time-critical medicines (TCM) within 30 minutes of arriving at an A&E.<\/p>\n
Nearly seven in 10 doses are not administered within 30 minutes of the expected time.<\/p>\n
TCM is prescribed to a patient for existing conditions, such as insulin for diabetes, Parkinson\u2019s drugs, epilepsy medicines and tablets for preventing blood clots.<\/p>\n
Last December, it emerged that an elderly man was left unable to swallow after waiting over two days in A&E without being given regular medication, and died four weeks later.<\/p>\n
The 85-year-old, who had Parkinson\u2019s,\u00a0was sent to a hospital emergency department after a routine appointment \u2014\u00a0but massive delays saw his A&E wait go into a third day, with most of it spent on a bed in the corridor.<\/p>\n
The study\u2019s lead author, Dr Jonny Acheson, said that more needs to be done.<\/p>\n
The Leicester-based emergency medicine consultant said that the findings \u201cshould serve as a call to action for both emergency medicine staff, as well as patients reliant on time-critical medications, to ensure no dose is ever missed in A&E.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dr Acheson, who has Parkinson\u2019s, added that while everyone has a role to play, \u201cthe NHS must think about how they identify people taking these types of medication and how they are able to ensure they receive their doses on time, every time while they are in the emergency department.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese medicines are critical to the quality of these patients\u2019 lives and we have a duty of care to ensure that they receive them when they should.\u201d<\/p>\n
The RCEM study focused on oral levodopa for Parkinson\u2019s and insulin for diabetes, as these are common in patients in A&E and must be given on time, using data from 136 emergency departments for more than 13,000 patients.<\/p>\n
RCEM president-elect Dr Ian Higginson\u00a0said the issue is an example of one \u201cwe should not be having to fix in our emergency departments\u201d and \u201chas risen to prominence because of the increasing number of our patients who are having to endure ridiculously long waits in our emergency departments \u2014 12, 24, 48 hours and even longer.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMissing doses of medication for illnesses such as Parkinson\u2019s or diabetes is not just inconvenient, it is dangerous, and missing multiple doses can have serious consequences,\u201d he warned.<\/p>\n
Parkinson\u2019s UK\u00a0praised the RCEM\u2019s work while Diabetes UK said delayed or missed insulin doses can be a potentially life-threatening emergency.<\/p>\n
Keep Our NHS Public co-chairman Dr Tony O\u2019Sullivan added: \u201cWhat was a minor issue when patients were being triaged, treated, admitted or discharged within four hours up to 2010, and even to 2015 before austerity took the wheels off the NHS, is now a major stress for A&E staff and risk for patients.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow can short-staffed teams safely monitor packed waiting rooms and patients in corridors on trolleys awaiting a hospital bed?<\/p>\n
\u201cThe lethal Tory inheritance left for this government has to be seen as an emergency and Labour must act now: fund urgent care \u2014 GPs, community, A&Es, ward staff and mental health.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the focus has to shift from partnership with private companies and deals with AI and data companies to safe urgent care for the population, support for NHS staff and the saving of lives at the front line.\u201d<\/p>\n
An NHS spokesperson said\u00a0it welcomed the report and will \u201clook closely at the findings.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) is marking\u00a0World Health Day today by calling on the UK\u2019s\u00a0four governments to heed the advice of the World Health Organisation\u00a0(WHO) and invest in \u201chealthy beginnings to build hopeful futures.\u201d<\/p>\n
The union is urging politicians to change tack with investment in maternity care across the country in the doldrums.<\/p>\n
RCM\u00a0chief executive Gill Walton said:\u00a0\u201cWe absolutely support the WHO\u2019s calls for governments to invest in women\u2019s healthcare: it\u2019s a call the RCM has made itself.<\/p>\n
\u201cWomen\u2019s healthcare has been overlooked and underfunded for far too long.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PATIENTS in A&E face serious complications from missing doses of prescription medicines while waiting days to be seen,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4316],"tags":[6155,105,4348,211,3061,6157,6156,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-9077","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-ae","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-healthcare","11":"tag-nhs","12":"tag-nhs-crisis","13":"tag-rcem","14":"tag-royal-college-of-emergency-medicine","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114315842646643417","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}