NHS Waiting Times

It is not unheard of, and now seems to be the norm, to wait a number of hours to be seen by the NHS. The pressures on the NHS are immense and the beds/space available is at a premium. With this in mind, sometimes the wait (known as a ‘trolley wait’) is fatal for the patient who requires treatment. Our Clinical Negligence department has dealt with a number of cases where a patient’s dignity and health have been affected due to waiting times and, on occasion, being left in a corridor of a hospital. This has, at times, resulted in the worsening of symptoms or an unimaginable outcome for the patient and family alike – the death of a patient.

In particular, because of those pressures of locating beds and placing patients wherever there may be space, patients can get ‘lost in the system’ or they themselves cannot communicate a change in their symptoms. The chaos that ensues from placing patients anywhere other than wards leads to a breakdown in communication and the patients left in disarray. The patients, already unsure and afraid of what is happening may even try to communicate their symptoms to a passing doctor and that information may be presented a different doctor than the one seen initially or, on occasion, those symptoms are not recorded appropriately.  Communicating a change in symptoms may be vital for the investigation process that a doctor needs to consider. Those changes, while waiting to be seen, could mean the difference between being categorised as a non-urgent case as opposed to the treatment requiring prompt care, say a life threatening development.

Wayne Walker, Clinical Negligence Solicitor within our Clinical Negligence department has dealt with cases where the hospital waiting times have had a dramatic effect on a patient and their family.  Patients have gone missing within the hospital and because of the wait, and the Hospital’s failure to appreciate the severity of cases and monitor the patient, patients have been left to their own devises and, on one occasion that Wayne recounts against the Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust, that patient was found collapsed on the toilet floor.

View the story here from the BBC News wesbite.