Help us to help you

I've had a few days off this week which was nice as it gave me a chance to catch up on a few jobs at home and I also had a nice meal out with friends.

The cold weather has continued and Emergency Departments continue to be busy. As regular readers will know part of my role is to manage ambulance  handover delays at the two local acute hospitals. This can be challenging at times, whether that is due to a lack of bed capacity in the hospital, high call volume to the ambulance service, delays in patients being seen and triaged in the Emergency Department or a combination of all three.

The trust I work for is committed to Right Care and the overarching aim of this programme is to ensure that patients receive the right care, at the right time and in the right place. This may not always be hospital and in fact locally  only around 38% of the patients our clinicians see are actually transported to hospital. Many of them are given advice or treated at home. They may be referred to their own GP or the Out Of Hours Service for follow up. Many callers to 999 may also be triaged  over the phone and advised to seek help from other NHS services. All of this work is in place to try to ensure that those people who really need and ambulance get one in a timely manner.

As we move nearer to Christmas there are a few things that you can do to help us to help you:

Also please:

Ensure you have a stock of everyday over the counter medicines.

Ensure that you have sufficient stocks of prescription medicines to see you through the holiday period

Seek advice for health problems now , don't put it off. Many everyday problems can be dealt with by your local pharmacist.

If you are having relatives to stay make sure they have their medications with them if needed. Do they have any specific needs? If so how will you cope with them?

Help us to help you , stay safe