Nigel Hastilow asks would £50 fines sober up A&E drunks?
The real surprise in the news that the ambulance service has blacklisted 52 homes in the West Midlands and Staffordshire, is that it isn’t more.
Attacks on staff and the verbal abuse of people dedicated to saving lives are disgusting. Especially as many of the offenders involved will be emergency service ‘regulars’.
From a close and enforced observation of how the system works, over several days, involving different patients, I have seen just how misused our health service has become.
My own health remains okay (touch wood) but unfortunately I have been involved in the hospitalisation of other people several times recently.
It’s allowed me to observe at close quarters how accident and emergency departments operate and listen to staff views on the failings in the system.
It is clear the single biggest problem facing hospitals is the need to admit into A&E the drunks and druggies who would once have been thrown into a police cell until they sobered up.
These days they are deposited by long-suffering ambulance crews at A&E where they disrupt proceedings, roar for attention when they are not throwing up on the floor or fall into deep, loudly-snoring sleep.
According to one paramedic crew, about 10 years ago the vast majority of their patients were genuine medical emergencies – car-crash victims or people having a heart attack.
