Ambulances left lining up outside hospital as A&E slammed by bank holiday weekend

Hospital chiefs have urged people to consider if they are sick enough to come to A&E

Ambulances were left lining up outside a Greater Manchester hospital as A&E was slammed following the Easter bank holiday.

In footage captured outside the Royal Oldham Hospital on Easter Monday (April 21), at least 12 ambulances can be seen parked up, with one social media commenter saying there were ‘16’ parked up in total. Ambulances typically are forced to queue up outside hospitals when there is little or no capacity inside a hospital’s emergency department.

The hospital confirmed that, on Monday, it ‘experienced a large number of patients arriving at our A&E in Oldham, which can often be the case over a long bank holiday weekend’.

Hospital chiefs have urged people to consider if they are sick enough to come to A&E, or whether they could get help from a GP or pharmacist instead.

Paramedics must wait, often with patients inside the vehicles or on corridors inside A&E, to handover patients to doctors inside.

Delays build when there are not enough doctors to care for the people coming to hospital via ambulance, and if there are too few hospital beds to admit people who need in-patient care.

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Steve Taylor, chief officer at The Royal Oldham Hospital, which is part of the Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust (NCA), said: “On Monday, we experienced a large number of patients arriving at our A&E in Oldham, which can often be the case over a long bank holiday weekend.

“Our colleagues worked hard to ensure patients were triaged as safely and as quickly as possible so we could provide urgent care to those who needed our immediate attention.”

Hospitals have been full to bursting in recent years, with thousands of patients across the country – and hundreds in Greater Manchester – medically well enough to be discharged.

But they languish in desperately-needed hospital beds unnecessarily because of sweeping shortages in social care.

For example, an elderly patient may not be discharged for weeks until a care home placement comes free, or enough carers are available to visit them multiple times throughout the day.

That means patients often deteriorate on a ward instead of recovering at home, and are finally discharged in a much worse condition.

This can lead to falls or complications, resulting in them coming back to A&E and being readmitted – in-patient bed shortages continue and queues build in the emergency department as people wait for a bed.

Royal Oldham Hospital chiefs are pleading with the public to ‘consider if they need to use A&E and whether they could get the help they need from another service, for example, a GP or pharmacist’.

Hospital leaders say that ‘if people have an urgent but non life-threatening medical need and aren’t sure which service to use – NHS 111 online can provide advice’.