A fed up Wollongong emergency department doctor has called out the "dangerous" conditions facing his patients, after 10 people were left waiting for beds for more than 24 hours in a single shift last week.
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One person had been forced to wait in emergency for three days, 17 hours and 24 minutes to be admitted, he said.
The emergency department consultant, who has worked in hospitals for almost 20 years, told the Mercury the current situation inside Wollongong's ED was "the worst I've seen anywhere".
"I can't remember anything else like this," he said.
"It's dangerous and unheard of. This is what happens in other countries, not here."
Last Tuesday after the long weekend, he said patient logs showed there were 10 patients who had been waiting in the Wollongong ED for more than a day.
The person who had been in emergency for three days and 17 hours was one of three people waiting for a bed for 60-plus hours.
The average length of stay for people waiting for a bed in hospital that day was 23 hours, he said, and some people were in the waiting room for 10 hours before they were seen.
I don't think the public should be reassured about the way things are. We are doing our best to pick out the life threatening conditions among the large numbers of people coming through but we will not be able to deal with everything.
- Wollongong emergency department consultant
"On Tuesday we had 40 admitted patients in the department, waiting to go upstairs, with 130 patients in total in the department in the beds and in the waiting room," he said.
"That means there's people who don't have seats in the waiting room. Doctors are treating people on chairs in a corridor when they should be in a bed, or they're in an ambulance trolley."
For months, paramedics and nurses at Wollongong have been raising the alarm about the growing "bed block" in emergency, which happens when the hospital is so full there are no beds to admit new patients.
This means ambulances also get banked up on the ramps outside the hospital, with paramedics waiting hours to unload their patients.
The health district has also admitted there is a problem, saying it has been "experiencing high demand for emergency care and patient admissions in recent months".
Last month, it put in place a "circuit breaker" period, which was designed to improve patient flow amid the "unprecedented challenges" facing the health system.
However, it this week declined to respond to the doctor's specific concerns, instead referring the Mercury to previous statements it has made about hospital demand.
The doctor, who has asked the Mercury not to use his name, said he and other doctors were getting more and more frustrated, and wanted the public to know what was going on.
He said bed block in Wollongong was "much worse" than in other hospitals he works in.
"These sort of numbers are the worst I've ever seen, anywhere," he said.
"We want to start agitating in some way, because we work our arses off and we get measured by these ridiculous KPIs which we will never in the real world be able to fulfil.
"There's not much else we can do - we can't work harder - and what we are hitting our head against is a hospital that has no more beds. It's a capacity issue - we are beyond capacity."
He said little had changed in the nearly 20 years since he started working at Wollongong, despite a population explosion. With the new Shellharbour Hospital at least five years away from completion, he believes something needs to be done quickly to free up space for more patients.
"We've got so many more people funnelling through the door, from Shellharbour, Shoalhaven and Bulli - Wollongong is a hub for all of this - and the primary care system is broken, they can't get into the GP or their specialists, and people are ageing," the doctor said.
"We have got to the point in emergency where we can't meet people's expectations - we can't do everything we can for patients, and so we now have people who come back to the hospital within a couple of days which just adds to the problem."
Last week, the Bureau of Health Information released its latest round of data, showing long wait times in the ED and for ambulances waiting to unload. For instance, the data showed that patients who were admitted to hospital faced an average wait time in the Wollongong ED of 11 hours and 31 minutes.
The data also showed critically ill patients in Wollongong were waiting longer for treatment to start with only 44.8 per cent of the highest priority patients starting their treatment within the target of 10 minutes.
The doctor said he expected the next quarter to show worse results, and believed there should be a better way of updating the public on what was going on.
"I can guarantee you that the figures for the next three months will be worse, having lived through it," he said.
"I know it is getting worse and it is dangerous."
"I don't think the public should be reassured about the way things are. We are doing our best to pick out the life threatening conditions among the large numbers of people coming through but we will not be able to deal with everything."
"There needs to be transparency about the situation in the ED and not buried in some obscure report six months later - people need to know week-by-week that this is how many patients are waiting in ED."
He said with conditions only getting worse following exhausting waves of coronavirus pressure, some staff had left and others were considering following them out the door.
"Most of us have had enough," he said.
"Some people have left and I am contemplating leaving here, because I don't mind working hard, but I don't want to be constantly working in an environment where the people who are running the place don't comprehend or seem to be acting in your interests.
"I love the people I work with and it's hard to walk away, but we've been working hard for two years, and your tolerance for bullshit is low, so when you hear about the non-existent plans to change things, it does stick in your core a little bit."
"We're seeing the normal demand now - there is influenza as well, and there has also been no break because we're tired - but what's coming in is not COVID, it's everything. It's cancers, heart attacks - this is what our population has."
He took aim at the district's "circuit breaker" period saying most staff thought it was "the biggest load of BS" that had done little to change the situation.
"We've had bad bed block for years, this is not a new thing. But now it's worse and you've got management going 'let's go on a fact finding mission'," he said.
"These people aren't over their brief if suddenly now they are trying to find out why this is happening - what have they been doing while we have been slogging away?"
NSW Opposition Health spokesman and Keira MP Ryan Park said the Illawarra's healthcare system was failing.
"After over a decade in power the NSW Government has completely failed the people of the Illawarra when it comes to healthcare," he said.
"Our emergency department is at breaking point.
"Anyone who thinks it is acceptable for patients to be waiting close to a day in a crowded Emergency Department is absolutely kidding themselves.
"Our region needs a hospital that meets the needs of our growing population and after more than a decade in power we are now starting to see the result of understaffing and underinvesting in our local health services."
An Illawarra Shoalhaven Local Health District spokesperson said patients who present to the ED with serious and life-threatening conditions, like heart attack and stroke, would always be seen immediately.
"With the support of our NSW Ambulance colleagues, we work collaboratively to ensure all patients are seen and treated as quickly as possible," they said.
Regardless of the mode of arrival to ED, all patients are triaged and seen by a doctor according to the seriousness of their condition.
"This means that patients with less urgent conditions may need to wait longer during periods of high demand, even those arriving via ambulance.
"We ask that our community considers alternative options to the ED for minor conditions."
These options include medical centres or GPs, the Urgent Care Centre at Bulli Hospital, pharmacies or calling HealthDirect on 1800 022 222.
If the situation is life-threatening, always call Triple Zero (000) immediately or go straight to the Emergency Department.
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