NI waiting lists: 'You jump every time the phone rings'

A Lisburn woman who has been waiting for heart surgery for over a year says it is 'agonising.'

Linda Murray needs an operation on one of the valves in her heart and has been hoping to get the call since January 2020.

The 62-year-old told Downtown Cool FM she is worried about the impact:

"I have been called for the pre-operative assessment a few times and then I have been mentally preparing myself for the surgery only for it not to happen which is tough to deal with.

"The condition means I am incredibly tired.

"Some days all I can do is work and sleep because it takes so much out of me.

"I have always been very fit and active and loved hiking up mountains. I tell myself to hold on and not despair and once I get the surgery I will be able to do that again.

"At the minute I have to sleep sitting up because lying down I don’t feel like I can breathe.

"It is now at the stage where we won’t know if I will need a full valve replacement or repair until the surgeon begins operating.

My cardiologist and hospital staff have been incredible but it’s the system that’s the problem."

Linda's story comes as the British Heart Foundation warns the number of Northern Ireland cardiac patients waiting over six months for surgery has increased 30-fold since the pandemic.

According to the charity at the end of 2020 there were 30 times as many people waiting over six months for cardiac surgery compared to the same period in 2019.

Head of BHF NI Fearghal McKinney said:

"Staff across our health service have worked tirelessly for more than a year now to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic. In cardiology, services were pulled or dramatically reduced in order to deal with the onslaught of the pandemic, and staff have gone above and beyond since last March. We can’t ask any more of them.

"Heart operations are not something that people can easily go without – delaying them can cost lives. The significant backlog of people needing heart surgery will keep growing as there are also significant numbers of people waiting for cardiology referrals and many of these are likely to require surgery. That waiting list will only get longer and make no mistake, as this goes on people will die on that waiting list or will have died already.

"Every number on that waiting list is a person with a family worried sick about the future. Many of them are facing anxiety and a worsening quality of life as time goes by. It is important that if your symptoms are worsening whilst you wait that you seek medical advice."

Downtown Cool FM asked the Department of Health.

In a statement the Health Minister described current waiting lists as 'appalling.'

Robin Swann said: "It isn’t right that any patient should wait longer than is clinically appropriate for treatment and I fully understand the distress and anxiety that long waiting times cause, particularly when patients are suffering pain and discomfort.

"There is no doubt that the pandemic has had a devastating impact on our hospital services, particularly elective care. Waiting times have been unacceptable for some time and, regrettably like many other countries across the world, they have deteriorated further as our health service responded to the pandemic.

"Even before the pandemic however a decade of underinvestment had left our health service in a perilous position. There is no more pressing issue facing Northern Ireland than our waiting lists – they are appalling and that is why I’ve said it requires collective and urgent prioritisation.

"To address this issue, very shortly I will be publishing an elective care framework. The purpose of this framework is to set out both the immediate and longer term actions and funding requirements needed to tackle our waiting lists and put them on a sustainable footing.

"Bringing our waiting lists to an acceptable level in the long term will require sustained and substantial investment and additional staffing.

"The new approach that I established earlier in the year is continuing to ensure that elective care is prioritised to make sure that those patients most in clinical need, regardless of place of residence, get access first.

"As we emerge from the latest surge of the pandemic, the focus of our health service is on rebuilding services and it is in this context that I recently published Trust rebuild plans for the period April to June 2021. These plans set out how activity will be increased across all programmes of care, including elective cardiac services, during the three month period."