Doctors and nurses are under “almost intolerable pressure” as a result of cuts in hospital beds, increasing admissions and workforce shortages, the outgoing president of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh has warned.
Dr Neil Dewhurst also claimed the number of hospital beds being occupied now “commonly exceeds” what is regarded as the maximum safe level.
He said occupancy rates in some areas reached as high as 124% last year and it was “essential” for the health service to commit to having a maximum occupancy rate of 85%.
Dr Dewhurst, a consultant cardiologist, also called for “more stringent standards” for the quality of care, as had happened south of the border following problems identified in Mid Staffordshire.
While Dr Dewhurst stressed there was “much to be proud of in the NHS in Scotland”, he added “a variety of pressures had built up in hospitals which were now seriously affecting the ability to deliver the quality of care patients required”.
Dr Dewhurst, who stands down as RCPE president this week, said problems in the health service had most recently been seen in NHS Lanarkshire – which was last year told a range of improvements must be made at three hospitals following a review into patient safety prompted by higher than average mortality rates. But he said these problems “could just as easily have happened” elsewhere.
Dr Dewhurst said: “Reductions in the numbers of acute beds while medical admissions have continued to rise, in parallel with workforce shortages, have placed almost intolerable pressure on our doctors and nurses.”
The NHS has deployed a number of “coping strategies” to deal with this, said Dr Dewhurst, but while these strategies were “only ever intended as crisis management tools”, they were now “in real danger of becoming accepted daily practice”.
And while he welcomed a recent pledge from the Scottish Government to end “boarding” – moving patients between wards because of overcrowding – this had now become “established practice in many Scottish hospitals on a year-round basis”.