UK emergency care ‘stretched to the limit’, says report

A new report from the College of Emergency Medicine has highlighted the extreme pressures under which the UK's emergency care sector is currently suffering.

The survey of 1,077 emergency department workers revealed that 62 percent regard the way the emergency medicine service is currently run as being unsustainable, with 94 percent having to regularly work in excess of their normal planned hours to cope.

This pressure is making it harder to implement safe working standards and reducing the attractiveness of the specialty to new trainees, as well as leading to many doctors and consultants feeling compelled to leave the country.

As such, the college called for immediate action by executive boards of trusts and commissioners to ensure better planning, as well as an urgent review by the British Medical Association and NHS Employers to create safe and sustainable working practices.

Responding to the report, BMA consultants committee chair Dr Paul Flynn said: "The government has a responsibility to ensure patient safety and doctors' wellbeing are not compromised by unsafe and unsustainable working practices and the BMA will ensure they don't shirk this responsibility."