A documentary documenting nighttime A&E in the age of Covid-19 has revealed how the pandemic makes it increasingly difficult for staff to deal with drunk and unruly patients.
Junior sister Kirsty, who works the night shift at the Royal Hull Infirmary, opens up about being subjected to abuse on tonight’s A&E After Dark, while trying to enforce rules such as wearing a mask.
The Channel 5 show, airing at 9pm, which was filmed at the beginning of the autumn when pubs were still open, reveals how patients take their anger out on staff due to unpopular Covid-19 restrictions which forbid family members from entering A&E with them.
Kirsty says her family would be ‘mortified’ if they knew the names disgruntled patients call her, as the night team become more and more reliant on their security team to keep order in the waiting room, and throw out unruly patients when necessary.
Junior Sister Kirsty, who works the night shift at the Royal Hull Infirmary has opened up about the abuse she faces from patients who refuse to comply with covid-19 restrictions
Things start to get chaotic in A&E when drunk patients who have injured themselves on nights out flock to hospital, and then struggle to comply with coronavirus regulations, such as wearing a mask in the waiting room.
Confrontations between staff and patients sometimes escalate to the point where the hospital’s security team has to intervene and protect NHS workers.
‘A lot of patients are being quite aggressive with us about the fact that their relatives aren’t allowed in, about the fact they have to wear a mask while they’re here,’ Kirsty tells the camera.
‘My family would be mortified if they were stood behind me and hear some of the things I’ve been called while I’ve been at work,’ she adds.
A&E After Dark, airing tonight at 9pm on Channel 5, shows NHS staff struggling to deal with unruly patients and their families in the age of covid
‘I’m a nurse, I’m not a security guard, I don’t come to work to be a bouncer.’
The programme shows the security team escorting the family of a patient out after they started to scream at staff, who told them they could not accompany their relative into A&E.
NHS staff, wearing masks and scrubs, look shaken as the family can still be heard screaming and protesting in the background after the confrontation.
The camera then follows a security guard as he tries to reason with the patient.
NHS staff have become more reliant on their security team to deal with antagonistic patients. On the show, members of staff seem shaken after an altercation with the family of a patients who refused to leave
Kirsty, pictured, said her family would be ‘mortified’ by some of the abuse she received while she was working. She added she did not come to work to be abouncer
‘They’re not here to be spoken to like that. You wanna be treated? You treat them with some dignity, like you want to be treated with some dignity,’ the security guard can be heard telling the patient, whose identity is not revealed.
When the patient refuses the calm down, she is also escorted out of the waiting room like the rest of her family.
Security guard Dan says he does not enjoy making people leave A&E, but that he sometimes has no choice.
‘When I’m escorting people out of A&E, I don’t feel good for it, because that’s the last thing we want to be doing,’ he tells the camera.
‘At the end of the day, they are here for a reason. But with some patients, you can feel it that they’re ready to kick off,’ he adds.
A member of the team tries to reason with the patient, telling her she needs to treat staff with ‘dignity’
Eventually, the team escort the woman, who is swearing, out of the A&E department after the confrontation
Unruly patients add to already stressful shifts where staff have to deal with serious cases on top of the coronavirus pandemic.
Tonight’s show sees several patients being treated for emergencies, including a man named Jay, 19, who was stabbed during a confrontation with another reveler on his night out.
While he has sustained serious injuries, including a cut to his neck, Jay appears calms, but grows impatient to leave when doctors tell him he needs to go through several tests to make sure he’s not bleeding internally.
Doctor Sam – who is looking after Jay, says: ‘Patients can get frustrated waiting. Especially when patients have been drinking.
‘They can become impatient and want to leave early. It’s incredibly important that we don’t miss a bleed in the brain that could be fatal,’ Dr Sam adds.
Eventually, Jay orders a taxi to go home, because he is ‘tired,’ even if doctors are still waiting for his test results to make sure he is not bleeding from his brain.
He tells the camera: ‘I’m supposed to wait for my results, but I’m tired. I really want to go home.
He adds: ‘Worse comes to worse, I don’t wake up in the morning. I won’t f****** know about it, will I?’
When Dr Sam asks him if he is about to leave the hospital, Jay explains he means ‘no disrespect’, but needs to go home because he is working the next day, and he is worried about losing his job.
Eventually, Jay still decides to go home against medical advice, in spite of Dr Sam’s efforts to have his results fast-tracked and explaining to Jay the risks of leaving without knowing if he is indeed bleeding from the brain.
Thankfully, it is revealed at the end of the episode that Jay does not suffer from any internal bleeding and recovers.
A&E After Dark airs tonight at 9pm on Channel 5.