An elderly woman was left lying on a Merseyside street for nearly five hours with a broken hip while waiting for an ambulance, as nurses report patients dying in packed A&E waiting rooms. Healthcare staff say they are already burnt out and unable to keep up with the flow of sick patients, and fear the colder months ahead.
Elderly woman waited five hours on the street
Steve Ashcroft was pulling into the road where he lives, Holden Grove in Brighton-le-Sands, Crosby on Tuesday afternoon when he heard 77-year-old Lynda Hill shouting for help. He told the ECHO: "She was outside a house on the side of the pavement. I did a quick assessment and established pretty quickly that it was either her leg, hip or pelvis. She is 77 and has problems with osteoporosis. She is also on blood thinners so I was worried about an internal injury."
Steve made the 999 call at 2.44pm, but the paramedics would not arrive until 7.40pm. He said this was "completely unacceptable" and that if the weather had been worse, Lynda could have been at risk of hyperthermia. He said: "It was a concern that she would be getting colder, the neighbours all got blankets and a pillow and she was in the recovery position. We were just watching her symptoms and monitoring her. I knew with her health history there was a great risk."
He added: "Luckily it was dry and relatively warm. For a vulnerable person, if this had been a different time of year she would have gone hyperthermic. On my last call to them I was put on hold. I was exceedingly concerned." He added: "I was beside myself, I thought this was just completely unacceptable. There was no way I was going to leave her."
When Lynda did finally arrive in hospital, it transpired she had broken her hip and required hip replacement surgery. Steve added: "So she was lying with a broken hip on the street for all that time." Steve shared a video on social media which showed Lynda on the floor. Her family have given permission to include a still image to highlight the problem.
Nurses describe desperate scenes at Arrowe Park
One nurse who works in the A&E department at Arrowe Park Hospital in Wirral told the ECHO that she had witnessed people dying in the waiting room before being seen, and said elderly patients with severe injuries are consistently waiting in the back of ambulances for entire nights, unable to get inside the hospital.
The exhausted nurse, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told us: "It is worse than it has ever been and it is only going to get worse as we head into winter. There is a huge amount of staff off with work-related stress at the moment. The hospital trust is trying to save money, so we often aren't getting bank (agency) staff to replace them and are just being told to get on with it. So the rest of us are having to pick up the slack and it is awful. There are just too many very sick patients and nowhere to put them."
Last winter the ECHO reported on the chaotic conditions inside the hospital, where an elderly woman died alone on a corridor trolley without staff able to tend to her. One nurse told us this was not the only time this has happened. She said that earlier this summer a patient died slumped in a wheelchair in the waiting room where they had been for 26 hours.
In August, a new £40m urgent and emergency care facility opened at Arrowe Park, marking the biggest capital investment in the Wirral hospital since it first opened in 1982. But one nurse working in the department told the ECHO the new state-of-the-art facility has not helped the situation staff are facing inside. They said: "The new building has not helped things, if anything we have less space than before. Our escalation area for A&E is being labelled a medical ward, which is just fudging the numbers for A&E - it is still us having to look after the people in there."
Staff fear more deaths this winter
Detailing some of the grim scenes she has witnessed in the department in recent months, the nurse added: "We have patients in the back of ambulances all night long because they can't get inside the hospital. We recently had an elderly gentleman with a shattered femur who was outside in an ambulance for over six hours." The nurse added: "We also had a 96-year-old in the waiting room for 16 hours. It is not safe, we just have nowhere to put people. I am 100% sure that more people will die unattended on trolleys and in chairs this winter. I am really afraid of what is coming. Staff morale is rock bottom, it is my goal to find a new job and get out by next year."
Health services respond
Responding to this article and the events described, a spokesperson for the North West Ambulance Service said: "We are sorry it took a long time to reach Lynda, and we hope she makes a full and swift recovery. Unfortunately, it was a busy day for NHS services across Merseyside, and this impacted our ability to respond as quickly as we would like in some cases. If Lynda would like to contact our patient resolution team, we would be happy to look into the incident and provide more detail."
And in response to the claims from staff at Arrowe Park, a spokesperson for the Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust said: "Patient safety is our highest priority and we recognise the sustained pressure on urgent and emergency care services and the impact this has on patients and staff. Our Emergency Department is one of the most highly resourced and closely supported services in the Trust. Staffing is reviewed regularly throughout the day against safe staffing requirements, and senior clinical and operational leaders, consultants and senior nurses work alongside front line teams in the department to ensure patient flow and access."
The spokesperson added: "The new Emergency Department at Arrowe Park Hospital, designed by the ED staff, provides modern facilities for patients and staff. We continue to review how the department operates so that its people, facilities and resources are used effectively and patients receive safe, timely care. We are also working closely with health and care partners across Cheshire and Merseyside to improve patient flow and ensure people receive care in the most appropriate setting. We ask the public to attend the Emergency Department only in a genuine emergency; for other health concerns, NHS 111, GPs, urgent treatment centres and local pharmacies can provide advice and support."
