ED nurses: 2017 'worst winter NHS has ever seen'
A&E staff call for urgent reform to address winter pressures
A & E staff in the Ulster Hospital have said workers in Northern Ireland were left nearly broken by last year's winter pressures.
Figures from the Department of Health show during December 2017 there was a rise of 5% in attendances in Emergency Departments, compared to the same month the previous year.
And the number of patients waiting longer than 12 hours more than doubled.
Health workers met to debate issues facing the profession at the annual Royal College of Nursing congress in Belfast this week.
Chris Maguire qualified last summer and said he was not prepared for the pressures he faced:
"It's a fantastic job but the challenges that we faced over this winter was enormous and really need to be addressed for the next winter.
"It was very, very difficult with trolley waits and people waiting a lot longer in the emergency department than they should've been.
"Overcrowding and staff shortages made life very difficult for ourselves.
"It seems to have got steadily worse over the last couple of years with numbers attending ED, the number of people waiting in ED for admission increasing.
"I think it has been worse than what I expected but if you talk to senior nurses who have been working in the profession a lot longer than I have, they've also said the same.
"They feel like this is one of the worst winters they've ever seen."
And he called for change to be implemented to prevent the same problems this year:
"Things need to change, there needs to be plans put in place because nurses aren't going to accept it any longer.
"Not just nurses, doctors and all allied health professionals can't go through another winter like we had.
"It's a very pressurised job, especially coming out of university in August and then as you're just starting to find your feet you're put into the winter crisis."
His boss Roisin Devlin is the lead nurse at the emergency department for the South Eastern Trust.
She told Downtown Cool FM, last winter was the most challenging she has ever experienced:
"This winter has potentially been the most difficult winter the NHS has ever seen.
"What nurses have said to me at the moment is: ' I can't do another winter like that.'
"And if we don't do something about it, we will have staff leaving Emergency Departments and we will have people leaving nursing because the pressure that's being put on them is just unsustainable.
"I have seen staff almost broken by this winter and broken by the pressure of it.
"Very frustrating is the lack of government to be able to help us move things forward and no health minister to be able to make decisions and if something doesn't happen about that soon, I really do worry about going into next winter the way we are at the moment."