LONDON — People of England: Please treat your ingrown toenails and hiccups at home. Do not bother emergency services with them.
That was the message Thursday from England’s National Health Service, warning that emergency rooms have been “under siege” from a deluge of minor ailments in previous winters.
The service is trying to promote alternatives to emergency rooms, such as pharmacists, urgent treatment centers and online systems, as a first point of contact amid fears that hospital workers could be overwhelmed by a combination of flu season and labor strikes this winter.
It includes a video, “24 hours NOT in A&E” — riffing on the name of a reality television show about Accident & Emergency rooms, which ERs are also known as here. The government video showed people seeking treatment for minor medical queries at a pharmacist or ordering a repeat prescription online, to demonstrate accessing medical help without clogging up emergency services.
According to NHS England, last winter between Nov. 1 and Feb. 28, people across the country visited the emergency room over 200,000 times for ailments including sore throat (96,998 visits), earache (83,705), itchy skin (8,669), nasal congestion (6,382), ingrowing nails (3,890) and hiccups (384).
The data applies only to hospitals in England because NHS policy is managed under separate systems in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Britain’s NHS, founded in 1948, delivers free health care for people who are “ordinarily resident.” For years, it has been under strain because of long wait times and funding issues, with many staff facing burnout and exhaustion. But it is also beloved and a point of pride among Britons, many of whom balk at the cost of health care in the United States and fear the creeping possibility of privatization that a free-trade deal between the two countries could bring.
This year, resident doctors in England are planning to stage strikes from Dec. 17 to 22 amid a dispute over compensation, compounding fears during a traditional spike in winter illness that began earlier than usual this year.
NHS England said it expects to face an unprecedented flu season this year with “no peak in sight yet.” Emergency rooms already saw 37,000 more visits in October than in the same month last year, the agency said.
Julian Redhead, the national director of urgent and emergency care at NHS England, in a separate statement Thursday urged those worried about their health to come forward but said “ballooning flu cases coinciding with strikes may stretch our staff close to breaking point in the coming weeks.”
The warning comes a day after the Royal College of Nursing, which represents over a half a million nursing staff across Britain and internationally, said NHS England data showed a “staggering increase” in the number of people in emergency rooms waiting over 12 hours to be admitted to the hospital.
“Every day, thousands of people up and down the country are forced to receive treatment in full view of other patients in inappropriate places such as corridors, cafes and even toilets where nursing staff are unable to easily access potentially life-saving equipment,” Nicola Ranger, the general secretary and chief executive of the RCN, said in a statement Thursday. “It is undignified and unsafe.”
She added, “As a matter of urgency, the government must improve staffing levels and capacity in emergency departments, and invest in community services where staff can keep people healthy at home and out of hospital.”
Wes Streeting, the U.K. government’s secretary of state for health and social care, said the government is working to make sure patients are treated during “this time of intense pressure.”
“We can all do our bit this winter by making sure we only use A&E … for genuine accidents and emergencies,” he said in a statement Thursday.
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