The South Eastern Trust welcomed Health Minister Mike Nesbitt, MLA to the Ulster Hospital’s Emergency Department. The Minister visited the department to witness first-hand the challenges and pressures currently being experienced on a daily basis and to engage directly with staff.
During the visit, the Minister met with Director of Unscheduled Care, Marc Neil, Clinical Director for Emergency Medicine, Dr Andrew Dobbin and Clinical Nurse Manager, Maggie Magowan, who provided valuable insights into the ongoing demands faced by the Emergency Department Team on a daily basis.
Health Minister Mike Nesbitt commended the staff for their dedication and resilience, stating, “It was important for me to visit the Emergency Department to show solidarity with the workforce because we are running on goodwill and you cannot run a health service on goodwill forever.
“I was very keen to engage with some patients, because they have a reasonable expectation coming to hospital of maintaining some dignity and some privacy and that is not always happening in the current circumstances. There are important issues that need to be addressed, such as the flow. People are coming in through the front door but we are not getting them out through the back door and that is about social care, it is about so many different things.”
The Health Minister continued, “I am trying to find levers for the immediate pressures that we are facing right now. As soon as we are through this, late February/early March, I will be asking stakeholders and the experts to sit down with me, with a blank page and look ahead to Christmas 2025 and see if we can do things differently.”
Welcoming the opportunity to update the Health Minister on the current pressures, Director of Unscheduled Care, Marc Neil added, “Whenever you are working in a hospital, particularly in an Emergency Department, every minute counts. We need patients and their families, as soon as they can, as soon as they are medically fit, to work with our teams to leave hospital, whether that is to their own home or to a care home. If the care home of their choice is not available, we will work with our team to get you that care home of choice, or get a package of care as soon as we can.
“Our Emergency Departments are hugely overwhelmed with sick patients and they need every space they can get to keep sick people well.”
Clinical Director of Emergency Medicine, Dr Andrew Dobbin stated, “The main reason we are facing significant problems in the Emergency Departments across our region right now is that there are too many patients in our department who require admission to a hospital bed. We need to unlock all the issues, all the barriers to ensure there is flow out of the hospital. This will allow us to get our patients who need to be admitted to an inpatient bed onto a ward quickly and to free up space in the Emergency Department to allow staff to deliver care to our population who deserve it.”
The visit highlighted the significant efforts being made by the South Eastern Trust to provide high-quality care under challenging circumstances. It also reinforced the Minister’s commitment to addressing the issues impacting emergency services and supporting healthcare workers across Northern Ireland.