IT HAS been well-documented over the past few weeks that Emergency Departments across the country are busier than ever.

The vast majority of hospitals, including Basingstoke, have been failing to hit Government-imposed targets, with soaring attendances and incidents of bed-blocking.

So I was keen to spend some time in Basingstoke hospital’s ED to get a glimpse of what it is like, both for the staff on the frontline and for patients visiting the department.

Because of the current pressures, I was unable to observe patient consultations, and instead observed from the waiting room, where patients who walk in to the department are triaged before being treated either by GPs based at the department or seen by clinicians.

The overarching impression that I had was of a busy, but in-control department.

The staff were obviously stretched, but they kept their cool, and patients seemed generally content with their treatment.

The message from Paul Barton, lead emergency nurse practitioner in the department, was clear: “It’s not as bad as you think.”

He said: “It has been very, very busy, but the focus on the four-hour target is misleading. The current average time – the mean – in which patients see a clinician is 24 minutes.”

The national target relates to the patients being admitted and then discharged or transferred within four hours Paul said: “People are now coming up here expecting to be waiting six hours. The number of personal thank-yous we’ve had over the last few weeks has gone up, because people are surprised that they haven’t had to wait longer. They come in expecting the worst and expecting to be waiting for hours and hours, but for the majority of patients that is not the case.”

Paul described the Emergency Department as the “pinch point” of the hospital, and explained that every area of the hospital has been affected by the increase in attendance.

This means that people are waiting longer for blood test results, and other services such as porters or X-rays, which then affects how quickly patients can be discharged or admitted.

Paul said: “People should not come in unless it is an emergency, but it’s equally important that people who do need treatment should still come in.

“Over the past few weeks, I’ve seen elderly people with broken bones who have been sitting at home night after night, watching the news and feeling like they can’t come in. Nobody should feel like that.”

Between 6.30pm and midnight last Thursday, 45 people visited the Emergency Department. Of those, 10 arrived by ambulance, and 35 made their own way in.

There were no breaches of the four-hour target during Thursday evening, and patients waited up to 41 minutes to see a clinician.

The waiting room became busier as the evening progressed, and the police attended with one patient at around 9pm.

Of the 45 people who attended ED last Thursday, five were seen by GPs.

Basingstoke hospital is unusual in that GPs are available via the Emergency Department. As previously reported in The Gazette, North Hampshire Calleva Commissioning Group (CCG) introduced the system in late 2013, to try to alleviate the pressures on ED, and ensure patients are seen by the right people.

Felicity Groom, a GP who works as part of the ‘front-door’ service at the hospital, said that numbers of patients she and her colleagues were seeing had risen dramatically in the last year.

She said: “It used to be a steady trickle of patients, but now it is just ridiculous. It is just more people coming in. It is not the case that lots of people are coming unnecessarily. Some do, of course, but it is only a minority.

“About 50 or 60 per cent of cases we get are parents worried about their children, and as a parent I do sympathise. You don’t want to tell people not to come in.”

Despite the many pressures faced in the Emergency Department, admissions have fallen slightly over the last week.

Paul said: “We are seeing fewer people in the last week, but we don’t know what to expect in the future. Nobody does.”