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Hospital apologises after grandfather, 76, spent 27 hours waiting for A&E bed before being sent home
19 August 2022, 09:34
A hospital trust has been forced to apologise to a 76-year-old man who spent 27 hours in a wheelchair in A&E, before being discharged, because they didn't have a bed for him.
Melvin Terry from Kent, is a retired design office manager and grandfather of six, who suffers from a heart condition.
In the morning of Sunday 7th August he went to A&E at his local Medway Hospital with chest pains and shortness of breath - both possible signs of a heart attack.
But despite being told he needed to be admitted to the cardiac ward and put on a five-day stretch of treatment, Melvin waited for 27 hours before being sent home, as they didn't have a bed for him.
Man tells LBC father endured a 27-hour wheelchair-bound wait in A&E
His son, Robert Terry told LBC when he arrived in the hospital on Monday morning, he was horrified to see his Dad sat in the wheelchair on the same spot he'd left him in A&E.
"You could see he was really shaken up, he'd not slept, he'd not really eaten, he'd hardly drunk anything because he didn't want to get up and go to the toilet.
"It was really traumatic for him."
It then wasn't until the afternoon after he arrived, that doctors told him "You need to be in a bed on a ward but we physically don't have anywhere to put you so we're just going to have to discharge you."
Robert doesn't blame the staff at the hospital, but says they've been let down by the current staffing crisis plaguing the NHS: "I was fairly shocked and horrified they could leave him like that, to me chest pains and shortness of breath could be a sign of a heart attack.
"But I'm not trying to have a go at the NHS because they are doing what they can with what they've got.
“That is the problem, I just don't think they have enough time and resource."
It's part of a wider crisis in the NHS affecting emergency wait times.
July saw record breaking demands on ambulances in England, with reports of crews waiting up to 20 hours at A&E to off-load patients, and more than 1,000 patients a day forced to wait more than 12 hours at A&E.
Data from the Independent suggests increased wait times could be driving as many as 1,000 patient deaths every month.
Rory Deighton is Acute Lead at the NHS Confederation. He says the crisis is caused by a mix of years of underinvestment and a current staffing crisis:
"It's really difficult for us to go out and recruit another 105,000 NHS staff, they just don’t exist.
"But the collapse we're seeing in the social care workforce, as the cost of living goes up, that's the thing that is really killing the NHS at the moment.
"People are choosing not to work in social care anymore, but to go to the hospitality and retail sectors, so we are failing to support people to live independently in their own homes, and emergency departments are the places where we pick up the pieces for all that.”
In a statement, Jayne Black, Medway NHS Foundation Trust Chief Executive said: “This was one of our busiest days in recent history, and we apologise to Mr Terry for the delay and any distress this caused him, and invite him to contact us so we can investigate his concerns.
“Our hard-working staff are facing unprecedented demand across NHS services including emergency care, and are also contending with issues discharging patients who are ready to be back in the community; this leads to challenges freeing up beds in the hospital.
"However it remains important that anyone needing emergency care dials 999, and the public use 111 online and local pharmacies for other health issues and advice.”
