A&E doctor to appear on BBC The One Show about Choose Well campaign

Dr Jimmy Stuart, clinical director for A&E at North Manchester General Hospital

A senior A&E consultant based at The Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust is to appear on the BBC’s The One Show on Thursday (6 December 2012) as part of a feature looking at the pressures facing A&E departments and to promote the NHS Choose well campaign.

Unnecessary visits to A&E departments are wasting valuable NHS resources and could mean some patients are having to wait longer to be treated, according to Dr Jimmy Stuart, clinical director at The Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust.

Figures suggest that every day up to 50 people who visit the A&E departments at North Manchester General Hospital and The Royal Oldham Hospitals run by Pennine Acute Trust could be treated more quickly and more appropriately by a pharmacist or another local primary or community health service.

A&E teams are routinely being faced with having to deal with ‘run-of-the-mill’ minor cases such as coughs and colds, backache, toothache, feet problems and upset stomachs on a daily basis – conditions that could be dealt with through a trip to the high street chemist or by visiting other local services.

Every attendance at A&E in the UK costs the public purse a minimum of £59. In the North West, last year this cost on average £20.9 million. According to NHS North West with more than one out of every ten people admitted to have used A&E when they knew they didn’t need to, hospital doctors and nurses are asking the public to think twice before they dial 999 this winter. A&E attendance from June 2011 to May 2012 was over 17.6 million – so that’s a staggering 2,112,000 wasted attendances.

Dr Jimmy Stuart, clinical director for A&E at North Manchester General Hospital, said:  "We often find ourselves dealing with patients who turn up to A&E with minor illness and complaints who could have been seen and treated elsewhere. We can receive on average 30-50 patients per day who could and should be dealt with in a primary care service such as a local pharmacy or community service. Not only are these unnecessary visits to A&E a drain on valuable and limited resources, but these patients will usually be low priority and this means they will be waiting longer than most others and could be treated more quickly elsewhere. We have one NHS budget which we all have a responsibility to look after it.

“By choosing and using the right services, patients can expect to be seen or treated more quickly, whilst keeping emergency services free for those patients with serious and life threatening illnesses.”

The Choose Well campaign aims to educate and inform people about the different NHS services available to them. It promotes self-care and the use of local high-street pharmacy for common complaints such as coughs and colds, flu, stomach upsets and general aches and pains. The campaign has been developed by NHS teams and has been growing in the past couple of years.

Patients are urged to consider the full range of NHS services available to them by visiting online at www.nhs.uk or for telephone advice call NHS Direct 0845 46 47.