Health chief warns: 'Winter pressures becoming year-round issue'

A top consultant has warned the increased strain on hospitals is no longer confined to the winter months.

The Ulster hospital in Dundonald has one of the busiest emergency departments in Northern Ireland, averaging around 300 patients daily.

Charlie Martyn is the Medical Director for the South Eastern Trust.

He told Downtown Cool FM while there is around 25% more pressure in the winter months, the rest of the year can be just as challenging:

"We're under significant and sustained pressure for quite some time, this isn't just winter pressure it's all year-round pressure.

"We're seeing...an increasing ageing population, people are sicker they've got more core morbidities, more illness and all of these compress and make it very, very difficult and they use a lot of the emergency department."

There has been a huge rise in the amount of patients attending unscheduled care centres.

Mr Martyn said the figures for the Ulster Hospital in Dundonald are startling:

"We've seen numbers grow attending the emergency department for as long as I can remember, there's probably been about a five or six percent increase in the last three years.

"This department yesterday saw 326 new patients, it admitted 84 patients, those are significant numbers."

As nurses plan to stage a 12-hour walk out tomorrow, Mr Martyn paid tribute to his staff.

Ongoing industrial action has caused widespread disruption in recent weeks as the row rumbles on and the Health and Social Care Board predicted a 'major impact' on health and social care services this week.

It is the first strike in the Royal College of Nursing's 103-year history after its members voted in a ballot in November.

Mr Martyn praised the hard work of workers in hospitals:

"I just want to commend our staff for the fantastic work that they do, we ask them to work in challenging and difficult circumstances and they just get on with it.

"You were at the bed pressures meeting earlier and you've seen how people pull together right across the whole hospital.

"The ward staff, the community care staff, social workers all trying to get patients placed and get them home."

The dispute between health workers and Department of Health officials centres around pay parity and safe staffing levels.

Nurses say current shortages in the workforce are compromising patient safety.

Mr Martyn said the planned medical school in the north west must get up and running as soon as possible.

"There are staff shortages both in nursing and in medicine and that's a national thing but it's a particular problem here in Northern Ireland.

"We need more doctors in Northern Ireland- the Gardiner report shows that we are 100 doctors short in training.

"In the medical community I sense frustration because they know that there are a shortage of doctors.

"People will say it takes a long time to train them that is true but the earlier you start, the earlier you get them on the ground so I sense a significant frustration both within healthcare management but also within the medical community itself."