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As cases of flu rise sharply across the UK, the Guardian spoke to Amir Hassan, an emergency medicine consultant and the divisional medical director at Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS trust, who shared his views.
“We’re seeing increased numbers of patients coming through, a lot of them with respiratory type illnesses. It means we need to try and isolate these patients and treat them – so they’ll come in with shortness of breath, [and a] cough.
And while the numbers are going up, we’re still getting the other patients coming in with falls and heart attacks and trauma. It puts pressure on the emergency department, and it puts pressure on the wards because you’re increasing the number of respiratory patients you’re managing.
The other problem we find, and I’m sure other hospitals find this as well, is that when you’ve got these respiratory cases, you need to try and isolate them as much as possible so you avoid spreading the virus to other patients.
This winter is quite bad. It’s probably one of the worst we’ve had so far with the numbers of patients we’ve got coming in, and trusts will struggle differently depending on their infrastructure.
My own trust is a very old hospital, with quite dated wards and architecture, which means we don’t have enough single rooms to actually isolate patients in.
It’s at the level across most hospitals at the moment where corridor care has been normal. The danger now is corridor care is normalised, and patients are coming in with respiratory infections, which makes it much more challenging to try and maintain your infection control. It is challenging.
I would really recommend to patients, if they’ve got symptoms, which would go with the flu or with the cold, to try and stay at home if possible. Do self care, go on to the NHS 111 app or the website. If not, they can always go to their GP or even go to their pharmacy.
In the vast majority of cases, managing the flu is really self-help. Just wait for things to settle down. But if you do need emergency care – you feel extremely short of breath or anything of concern – then, you know, we’re always there in the hospital to take care of people.
It’s affecting all age groups. The vast majority are frail and elderly, because they have less respiratory reserve. But we’re also getting some young patients coming in with the flu and [it’s] hitting them badly.
Flu itself can be a killer. It can be a dangerous disease if it’s not treated appropriately. Elderly people will die, and some young people will die from this as well.
If you are a high-risk individual, all I would say, and for everyone, is make sure you get your immunisations if you’re in one of those categories that has it for free – including school-aged children – because then you decrease the risk to your friends and relatives.
The pressure builds up. First and foremost in the emergency departments, and then it goes around the wards.
Everyone works really hard over the winter period and we expect winter is always going to be our busiest period, but it is especially hard. What you have to remember is that when the general public go down, a lot of our nurses and doctors and staff are going down as well.”
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