Emergency doctors in Scotland are “dreading” the Queen’s Jubilee weekend as fears grow that the public holiday will add to long patient queues.
One accident and emergency consultant has pleaded with patients to be considerate to NHS staff as they deal with long backlogs at a time when other workers will be on holiday.
Calvin Lightbody, at Hairmyres Hospital in Lanarkshire, said that the GP out-of-hours service in his region had been so short-staffed they had to send patients to A&E instead of treating the people themselves, adding to the delays in hospitals.
He said a four-day bank holiday weekend, when doctors’ surgeries will be shut, threatened to add to the pressure on “creaking” services.
“If you go to A&E you are going to have a very long wait to be seen, several hours probably,” he said. “Please be kind. Our staff are working extremely hard, they are flat out, they are exhausted, they are doing their best.” He appealed to patients not to delay seeking medical attention if they were seriously unwell including those suffering chest pain, heavy bleeding and stroke symptoms even though services were “overwhelmed”.
Source: The Times, 1 June 2022
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