‘We’ve never seen such pressure’

LOCAL health chiefs have said they have never seen the system under as much pressure as it is facing at the moment, with both the SWAH and Altnagelvin currently at full capacity.

During the January meeting of the Western Trust board, it was revealed the Trust had implemented it full protocol capacity plan at both hospitals, and has had to open two new wards and bring in extra staff to cope with the current demand, with more patients requiring care than ever.

Chairman Sam Pollock opened the meeting by stating the pressure on the hospitals, staff, and the Trust’s community facilities was currently “immense” and “huge.”

Paying tribute to the Trust staff working through such difficult circumstances, he also commended the work of the NI Ambulance Service Staff, who had been working closely with the Trust.

“They don’t come under the board as such but for staff in an ambulance to sit with people, in some cases for hours, and they’re obviously in pain or discomfort, that is a huge ask,” he said, adding he wanted to acknowledge and say thank you to ambulance staff for everything they do.

Mr Pollock added, “Generally, within our facilities, I don’t think any of us have seen pressure that we’re having to cope with at this time.”

Trust chief executive Neil Guckian also opened his address to the meeting by recognising the current difficulties.

“Over the last number of weeks, many of our services have experienced unprecedented activity pressure,” he said.

“In our acute hospitals our full capacity protocol was implemented in both hospitals. The main outworking of this is that additional patients were moved to wards from the emergency department.

“Despite this action, both hospitals continue to experience high numbers of patients awaiting a bed.

“I want to pay tribute to so many of our staff, who provided care to our patients and clients over the Christmas period. When so many in society are taking a break, health and social care continues 24/7.”

Mr Guckian also revealed the “overheating” of the system was impacting on Trust finances, with the health body having to fork out to bring in extra staff to cope with demand.

“We’ve got significant extra number of patients in our emergency departments,” he said. “We effectively today have two wards of patients in our EDs which are non-commissioned.

“Those patients need staffing, we need to bring in extra staff for them.”