Tea and biscuits for patients stuck in A&E

SENIOR doctors and GPs are to assess all patients within minutes of arriving at North Staffordshire's accident unit to blitz marathon delays.

And patients queuing hours on trolleys will be offered tea and biscuits by volunteers to ease their ordeal.

The medics will lead a rapid assessment service being launched in the next few weeks.

Based in a private, confidential room being prepared off the unit's reception, the medics will step in soon after nurses have triaged off the sickest for immediate treatment. Some of the rest will be given appointments to return to next-day clinics – or even given pain killers and allowed home.

Robert Courtney-Harris, medical director of the University Hospital of North Staffordshire, which runs the unit, said: "It will work like a second layer of triaging, but more in-depth and led by doctors.

"There is nothing more guaranteed to disgruntle patients than to be kept waiting for many hours only to be advised to take some painkillers.

"That is being totally unfair to them so if we can give them that advice right at the start, or make appointments for them to return to next-day clinics, we save their time and take pressure off the unit.

"We are finding that people are remarkably tolerant to what is at times an intolerable problem.

"But we need to do more to make sure their experience as they queue is as good at it can possibly be.

"So we are also arranging for volunteers to go along the queues offering patients tea and biscuits."

Bosses at the Hartshill centre say while there has been some easing in the hold-ups over the past three weeks it is still hit by unprecedented peaks in demands. On one day 11 ambulances brought in desperately ill people in just 10 minutes.

Now officials have set themselves a deadline of the end of April to bring sustainable improvements.

They say that will hit Government targets that 98 per cent of patients must be treated and sent home or admitted to a bed within four hours of arrival.

In a separate initiative, private consultants have been brought in to look at how staffing levels can be increased at times when the demand is at its highest.

And ambulance data is being analysed to see if more services can be ploughed into neighbourhoods where most patients are brought from.

Mr Courtney-Harris added: "For example we are seeing if we can support nursing homes which most often call ambulances. We are now doing all we can to bring sustainable improvements even though things do go pear-shaped at times such as last week when we had 11 ambulances in 10 minutes.

"In the longer-term this reliance on A&E by the population needs to be broken otherwise we are in real danger."

Hospital chairman Mike Brereton said: "We are putting enormous focus on solving these problems and history shows that when this trust gives an issue this level of attention, we usually solve it."