Health board pledges more support at Scots super hospital after staff talk of "Beirut" conditions

Last week a 98-year-old patient was waiting seven hours on a trolley to be seen at the £1 billion Queen Elizabeth University Hospital only to be given antibiotics and sent home, the nurse said.

Glasgow's £842million super hospital was official opened by the Queen

There were 28 spaces available in the IAU, where patients are sent after being referred by their GPs, and most days there are over 40 patients in the unit, said the nurse.

Staff are said to have told management that the immediate assessment unit (IAU) needs to be "dismantled and restructured" and set similar waiting time targets to the accident and emergency department which aims for a maximum of four hours.

But the nurse has said: "This has been consistently raised to management by senior clinical staff since the unit opened and not a single thing has changed."

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said last week that the IAU had been under "extra pressure" when an elderly patient died on a trolley at the hospital after waiting six hours for treatment. The health board said it was due to a higher than average number of patients attending the department.

It launched a review of the treatment of the man who suffered a cardiac arrest on Tuesday. But the nurse said there was concern that the health board would investigate but "no or ineffectual changes unless kept under pressure of public scrutiny".

The health board said: "Likening a hospital environment to a war zone is both highly offensive to the hospital’s frontline doctors and nurses and alarming for the hundreds of thousands of patients who receive expert care at the hospital and it is extremely concerning to hear it described in this way.

"We have fully accepted that waiting times for a bed within the department are unacceptable and are today putting in additional capacity within the unit – more beds to treat medical emergencies and more space to treat those who do not require a bed."

The board said that the 28 beds in the immediate assessment unit are staffed with eight consultants, backed by seven junior doctors and a "highly trained" nursing staff.

"The model of care sees patients remaining for a short time whilst appropriate tests, investigations and treatments are provided. The decision will then be to either send a patient home or admit to one of the wards in the hospital," said a board spokeswoman.

"Four out of ten patients will require no more treatment after having spent time in the unit...therefore it is entirely appropriate that a patient may have spent some time in the department, been given treatment and then sent home."

The spokeswoman also denied that the demands facing the department last week at the time of the elderly man's death was exceptional.

The senior nurse said: "Immediate assessment is a complete misnomer. The IAU has absolutely no monitored time targets."

"The (accident and) emergency department gets priority each and every time when it comes to seeing, treating and moving patients to the acute receiving unit or a ward once a bed is available.

"The situation of this poor gentleman suffering on a trolley for multiple hours not having been seen is absolutely the norm.

"The IAU needs to be dismantled and restructured with the same time targets as Emergency Department.

"This has been consistently raised to management by senior clinical staff since the unit opened and not a single thing has changed.

"The IAU has been described by medical staff as "Beirut' with a description of one patient waiting so long they lay down on the floor with their rolled up jacket as a pillow."

The QEUH has consistently dropped beneath the Scottish Government's interim target of 95% of people being dealt within four hours at accident and emergency.

In the week ending October 25, 86.3 per cent of people were seen and either admitted, transferred or discharged within that time, the worst performing site in Scotland. That's a drop from 90 per cent in the previous week but an improvement on a new low of 77.2 per cent in the week ending October 4.