The public are turning from applauding NHS heroes to outright anger against frontline Bristol hospital emergency staff because of long waits, health bosses warn.
Over half of emergency department (ED) staff at University Hospitals Bristol & Weston NHS Trust (UHBW), which runs the BRI, Bristol Children’s Hospital and Weston General, have experienced violence or aggression recently, with one in six considering quitting as a result, its board heard.
Chief nurse and midwife Deirdre Fowler told the meeting on Thursday, September 30, the “extraordinary increase” in attacks was the result of rising demand for services and a change in public perception, with patients now taking out their frustrations at huge delays on A&E medics.
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A report to the board said Bristol Royal Infirmary’s emergency unit was “under enormous pressure with an unrelenting high volume of attendances and long waits to be seen and to be admitted, due to the large number of patients medically fit for discharge”.
It said: “The ED team is struggling to cope with the amount of patients who are in ED at any one time.
“Due to the pressure that the hospital is under, patients are waiting for inpatient beds for extended periods of time.”
It said 257 people had to wait on trolleys for more than 12 hours at the trust’s EDs in August before being admitted, with about three-quarters of these in Weston and the rest in Bristol.
The report said there were now 14,000 more patients on UHBW waiting lists than before the pandemic began in March 2020 because of the backlog in planned surgery that stacked up as the NHS focused on tackling Covid-19.
It said the BRI’s A&E was experiencing “unprecedented” levels of both ambulance queues and of patient numbers for this time of year, with only half of those attending seen within four hours in August.
Ms Fowler told the meeting: “I would like to highlight an extraordinary increase in violence and aggression towards our staff throughout our front doors – the children's ED, the BRI ED, and Weston.
“In fact I’ve just seen a survey undertaken by the ED team that demonstrates that over 50 per cent of ED staff have experienced some type of violence and aggression recently and that one in six of our staff members are considering changing roles because of what they’re experiencing.
“This is directly correlated to increased activity and a change in public perception from one of clapping and seeing NHS staff as heroes to being incredibly frustrated because of long waits.”
The report said high levels of A&E walk-in patients at the BRI had resulted in “frequent overcrowding in the Fast Flow waiting area which is a known driver of violence and aggression and poor infection prevention and control”.
It said the situation had been exacerbated by workforce shortages, particularly nurses, which meant inpatient escalation beds could not be staffed, leading to delays in patients being moved on from the emergency department.
The report said delays in restoring primary and community care services after the pandemic had also significantly increased demand at A&E and reduced the ability to discharge medically fit patients into the community.
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