The number of people who attended one of the country’s busiest A&Es surged by 18% after Storm Emma.
A new study published in the Irish Medical Journal called for the need for developing increase surge capacity in the country’s EDs during severe weather events.
The medics from the Cork University Hospital state that “surge capacity” describes the ability of the A&E and the health system to respond to a sudden increase in service demand.
The medics at the Dept of Emergency Medicine at CUH and School of Medicine at UCC state global pandemics, severe weather events and natural disasters can test the surge capacity of even the well resourced and prepared A&Es.
The CUH medics carried out a study into the impact of Storm Emma on the hospital’s A&E unit in March 2018 and found that presentation during the Storm Emma “Red period” from 4pm on March 1 to 6am on March 3 was 119 – 49% down on the corresponding period during 2017.
However, the numbers who attended the ED after the colour coded alert from March 3 to March 18 was 1,861 – an 18% increase on the 1,578 who attended during the same period in 2017.
The medics stated that “despite advice to remain indoors and public health awareness efforts, there were significantly more trauma related injury attendances attributed to the severe weather and snow”.
All staff at the hospital are currently preparing and dealing with the impact of the coronoavirus.
Now, in the new paper published in the IMJ, the Cork medics state: “Lessons learnt from this event will enable Irish EDs and the health service to better prepare for similar events in the future.
“We have identified the need for developing increased surge capacity, developing transportation protocol for extreme weather events, adjusting staffing to meet predicted surge in acute care demands and promoting health campaigns for the public during these events.”
The medics state that “transport to and from hospital of both staff and patients was possibly the single most difficult obstacle during this event and possibly had the largest impact”.
They added: “Formalised protocols for hospital staff transportation would be essential in the preparation for similar events in the future to avoid the difficulties seen during Storm Emma.”
The paper also records that transportation difficulties also proved to be a significant difficulty in enabling patients who had been discharged from the ED and indeed acute hospital beds to get home safely.
Patients fit for discharge were also unable to vacate their current acute hospital bed for newly- admitted patients.
