The NHS crisis we are facing this winter has been years and years in the making. Nurses, doctors, care workers and unions have warned for more than decade that a lack of staff would create a major crisis.
And now the staffing crisis has struck with a vengeance – slap, bang in the middle of the biggest winter bug influx in living memory. The lack of care packages for mainly elderly people who do not need to be in hospital – but take up beds while waiting to be discharged – is a problem that never seems to get any better.
A lack of carers in the community creates issues which back up all the way to the hospital front doors. Delayed discharges in hospitals mean beds are used up by healthy patients and the sickest in our country are kept in waiting rooms at A&E – sometimes for up to 48 hours on a hospital trolley.
