Barbados’ Queen Elizabeth Hospital struggles with rising emergency patient numbers

Barbados: Barbados Queen Elizabeth Hospital is facing critical administration and patient treatment issues after a sudden surge.

One of the major and prime hospitals of the country, Queen Elizabeth Hospital is in a situation of operational insufficiency after the number of patients admitted in the Accident & Emergency (A&E) Department increased suddenly. This led to a situation for which the hospital authorities weren’t prepared at all.

Shortage in patient beds, medicines, equipment, clinical resources, emergency assessments and lack of doctors and frontline workers caused the panic following the chaos. As a result, the Barbados Nurses Association (BNA) came into immediate action by issuing an urgent notice and appeal in the whole medical community.

The request made by the Barbados Nurses Association (BNA) specifically targeted the BNA members, medical professionals preferring nursing background specialized at emergency nursing or critical care.

All the eligible medical background professionals were requested to step forward and offer their services voluntarily to all the need and assistance requiring patients. Thereby helping to reduce the excessive pressure and workload of the doctors and support staff of Queen Elizabeth Hospital.

As per the official statements and records shared by the hospital authorities and management of the Accident & Emergency Department (AED) of Queen Elizabeth Hospital , Head of AED- Dr. Anne Marie Cruickshank, it was revealed that more than 55 patients during any point of time on a day are actively pushed back in order to wait for the first treatment.

Because of delay in early treatments given to their patients, the hospital authorities shared that the Accident & Emergency Department (AED) also experienced a hike in the number of severe trauma - related emergencies.

The most prominent and common root cause of these accidents is related to the carelessness made during driving by the people causing multiple vehicles involved in the accident. Some of these also led to immediate on the spot deaths.

Currently the hospital is experiencing multiple contingencies with the increased volume of patients battling with some of the most typical conditions like acute respiratory illnesses, multiple complications amongst the senior citizens, cardiovascular failures along with mismanagement of non- communicable diseases (NCD’s).