Patients have had to sleep overnight in the A&E unit of a North East hospital because of bed shortages, it has been reported.
A leaked memo reveals that this has happened at Sunderland Royal Hospital, reports The Guardian .
In a message sent to local GPs last Friday titled 'significant surge within the trust', hospital bosses said: "There has been increased pressures on bed capacity over the past two to three days which is having a severe impact across the trust.
"Fifty more beds are being used, 40 boarding in different wards and 20 patients were stuck in ED [the emergency department] as no beds available, resulting in some patients having to sleep overnight in ED.
"There have been some cancellations of elective activity [operations] and extra consultants have been pulled into ED to help manage the demand. It would be very much appreciated if you could only refer patients to ED if all other possible solutions have been exhausted."
According to the Guardian, the hospital is seeking to buy places in local care homes as another way of freeing up beds.
Those who slept overnight in the unit will have been patients whom doctors had decided to admit as medical emergencies but for whom hospital staff had not been able to find a bed, it was reported.
Angela Wadmore, the divisional director for urgent and emergency care at South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS foundation trust, which runs the hospital, said: "Over the past week we have seen a big increase in seriously ill people requiring emergency admission to hospital.
"As we safely manage these pressures, sometimes it may not be possible to accommodate patients into an appropriate inpatient bed as quickly as we would like, resulting in some patients having to spend longer within our emergency department.
"When this does occur, patients are cared for with compassion and looked after safely by our excellent emergency department staff, each within their own dedicated individual room to ensure patient privacy and dignity is maintained.
"As soon as an inpatient bed becomes available, patients are then safely transferred to another part of the hospital."
