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Pressure on our EDs and wards: How can you help?

November 15, 2023

Critical Incident

Thank you for all you have done and are continuing to do to ensure patients are safe and continue to receive high quality care.

We are all feeling it at the moment – these are tough times so do please remember that we have a range of health and wellbeing initiatives available should you feel you need them – please link this to the health and wellbeing page on connect.

Pressure on our EDs and wards: How can you help?

We have very ill patients within our beds and also we have patients across our hospitals who could be discharged but whose discharges are delayed for a number of reasons, this in turn affects our ability to admit those who need acute care from our EDs.

We all need to work as one team at this critical time to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our patients and take the necessary actions to do so.  If in doubt, please refer to your action cards for level 4 and critical incident situations.

Supporting timely discharges

Safe and effective discharges are critical to maintaining good patient flow through our services.

Please consider why every single patient needs to be in hospital and what we can do to safely support them to get home or to a community facility. As soon as someone no longer requires hospital-based intervention it is usually a greater risk to keep them in hospital than to discharge them.

Our community services offer a range of health and care interventions to support discharge, for example:

  • IV antibiotics
  • Oxygen weaning
  • Nebuliser care
  • Remote monitoring
  • Blood tests and associated medication changes

If people need care packages at home, temporary or permanent placements to a care home or end of life care, there are also several options in the community.  The Integrated Discharge Hub will offer advice and support – you can contact them on extension 3147.

Could your patient be admitted to our virtual ward?

If your patient has past the acute stage of their illness, but still needs a level of intervention to support their recovery, they might be able to be discharged into the care of our virtual ward – these are consultant led and allow patients to continue their recovery in the comfort of their own home, but with constant monitoring and medical input. If you are unsure about what a virtual ward is, please watch the short video below:

What is a Virtual Ward | PCCT – YouTube

You can also contact the virtual ward on extension 2664 (option 4) to discuss your patient with them.

At every board round and safety huddle, please consider the following:

What is keeping this person in hospital?

Could they go home? Could that be today?

Could their treatment be continued in the comfort of their own home?

Are they waiting for investigations? Could these be done as an outpatient?

Are they waiting on repeat blood tests? Could these be done in the community?

Please escalate within your clinical groups any issues that you cannot resolve locally, no matter how small they may seem.  Every small thing will make a difference to our patients.