London hospital doctor reveals patient spent his final 12 hours in a waiting room before dying of a blood clot
The NHS is facing the worst winter for A&E waits on record, as hospitals are being stung by bed shortages and staff strikes. Capacity is thought to have reached an all time high as cash-strapped nurses and ambulance crews take to the picket lines and winter infections stretch the health service.
Dr Milan Chand, an A&E medicine consultant at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich, has described the situation as ‘on a knife-edge’ with wait times closer to “days and not hours”. He shared one recent horror story from the hospital, where an 80-year-old man was forced to spend his final hours waiting to be seen by a doctor.
He explained that a fortnight ago the man arrived alongside his wife at Queen Elizabeth’s A&E with a suspected blood clot, only to endure a 12-hour wait before being rushed into resus when his condition deteriorated. The man sadly died after going into cardiac arrest.
Dr Chand told the Mirror he finds the fact he was unable to offer the man more dignity incredibly difficult. He says: “Him having to wait overnight in the waiting room with his wife is something that stuck with me when I went home that evening.
“It’s not common for me to speak to my wife about work, but I said to her that today was particularly tough. Having him inside A&E instead of in that waiting room would have been more dignified.”
He admits it’s no longer unusual for patients wait 10 hours to see a doctor and a bed on a ward takes “days and not hours”. He explained that when he started his job in 2018 around 350 patients arrived at the A&E in a typical 24 hours, but that number now tops 500.
He says: “The burden of worry each time I turn up for work in the morning has increased, I’m thinking, ‘We are full and how are we going to deal with it if pressure increases? It’s also mentally fatiguing when you go home. I’m thinking about work a lot more than I used to.
“I feel on more occasions than I ever have before that we are not delivering the care I would like to. My colleagues and I want to do more but can’t because of the circumstances around us. We are stretched.” Dr Chand says A&E becomes jammed when other wards have no space to take patients.
“Each year gets harder. There’s no wiggle room. Today the department is good but it is on a knife-edge.”
