A patient waited four and a half days for treatment at an emergency department in a Northern Ireland hospital, health chiefs have said
It was also revealed that some non-urgent callers to the ambulance service are waiting up to 24 hours for a response.
At 9am on Monday, there were 399 patients in emergency departments across Northern Ireland who had been given a decision to admit but had no bed immediately available.By 9am on Tuesday the number had reduced slightly to 335.Of these 447 had been waiting longer than four hours and 300 had been waiting longer than 12 hours.At the same time there were 22 ambulances parked outside emergency departments with patients waiting to enter.
"The cumulative impact of industrial action, and the seasonal impacts of flu and Covid, are likely to cause further pressures after the Christmas holidays. Michael Bloomfield, chief executive of Northern Ireland Ambulance Service, said:"It has been a particularly busy period, we expect that to continue and indeed to get worse over the next couple of weeks.
"For the less urgent but still sick patients in category three, we have had some patients waiting as long as 24 hours for a response from an ambulance to arrive.
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