Debate contribution: Altnagelvin Hospital: Access to Accident and Emergency

Debate contribution by Mrs Ciara Ferguson on 21 January 2025.

MLA

Mrs Ciara Ferguson

Party at the time

Sinn Féin

Date

21 January 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Adjournment

Heading

Altnagelvin Hospital: Access to Accident and Emergency

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4749983

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Like many other Members, I commend the work of the chief executive in the trust, the senior management staff and our healthcare workers, who are going way beyond the realms of supporting our most vulnerable people when they are in crisis and where they need support. I commend the work that they are doing, despite the circumstances and the conditions in which they operate. As we all know, long waiting lists have become the new norm. That is all year round now, not just as a result of winter pressures. The Royal College of Emergency Medicine, in a report last year, reemphasised that. Like you, Gary, last night at 11.00, I checked the waiting times. It is fantastic that we have those statistics. Altnagelvin had the worst of the 10 A&E departments across the North. Last night at 11.00, the wait was 339 minutes. So, if I had felt really unwell last night and needed support, I would have had to consider whether it was worth my going there to sit for five and a half to six hours before I could see someone. Tom Black from our local GP federation has emphasised that people who are sitting in Derry today are thinking twice about going to A&E despite the fact that they are seriously unwell. That is something to consider. We can go on about statistics, and we have all the information and statistics. The most up-to-date hospital statistics that you can get are for September 2024. There are statistics on the number of attendees and performance against a four-hour target at type-1 EDs during September. The Royal children’s hospital saw 67·8% of patients within four hours. It was the highest performer. None of our EDs was performing. Altnagelvin's ED saw 30·6% of people within four hours, which is fewer than one in three. Similarly, targets for the number of attendees and for performance against the 12-hour target are not being met. In A&E in September 2024, 1,182 people waited for more than 12 hours, the fifth worst across the 10 hospitals. That shows the scale. We are all truly aware of it. Moreover, the people in our communities are fully aware of it. I know that the Minister is aware of it, and I thank him for coming to the A&E and meeting the staff and meeting local patients who had been sitting waiting for days. Most Members will have had experience of A&E. I have had local experience with a mum who is 82 with dementia and who was brought in by ambulance and lay in a corridor in a plastic chair for many hours. She was diagnosed 10 hours later in a corridor and was crying and confused. It took until 4.00 am before she got a bed. I am not blaming the staff — they were absolutely amazing — but this is what we are dealing with. I have been in with a grandchild, who was throwing up after a fall and had vomit all over her. You are trying to get her to a toilet, which you have to queue up for, despite the fact that others require it. It is really bad and so many people are queuing outside the doors, particularly at night. They cannot even get a seat in the waiting room of A&E. It is really bad, and it is critical that we are discussing it today. We simply do not have enough space in A&E in Altnagelvin. We have myriad people with complex medical conditions waiting for treatment in confined spaces; that is totally inappropriate. Likewise, we have staff trying to provide healthcare in those settings who are under immense stress and pressure. They do not have the space and the equipment, As we know from the Royal College of Nursing report last week, they have said that they are going home feeling that they cannot do their job and provide healthcare with dignity and respect. They have highlighted the idea that patients are at risk of infections etc. As my colleague Pádraig Delargy emphasised, we need to look for solutions in the short term to support our healthcare staff and, likewise, to provide good care for our patients. That is about expanding our primary healthcare services, community healthcare services and district nurses at a local level. It is also about increasing our workforce numbers with targeted recruitment, particularly for A&E, and increasing bed spaces. I just want to re-emphasise that there are key areas of work that we, in the Assembly, along with the Minister, the Department and the trusts can be looking at in the short term —

— before, hopefully, securing a new A&E for Altnagelvin. Thank you.

782 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:48 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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