MANAGERS at the Royal Bolton Hospital have admitted they have reached crisis point -- as 24 patients lay on trolleys in the accident and emergency department waiting for beds.

John Brunt, the chief executive of the Bolton Hospitals NHS Trust, is calling for the building of three extra wards at the Minerva Road site to help cope with the rising tide of patients.

On the same day that the hospital came bottom of a North-west league table, staff on Bolton's medical admissions unit were unable to find beds for 24 patients.

Breathtaking

Semi-conscious patients could be seen lying on trolleys in the corridors waiting for a bed as A&E consultant Dr Chris Moulton said: "The number of admissions that we are seeing is breathtaking.

"It is not an ideal situation seeing patients on trolleys. Every day, all our beds are full. We are stashed full of people in every nook and cranny. It is the same day or night."

One patient, Brenda Green, of Harwood, was left waiting on a trolley for 16 hours after being admitted to A&E on Monday with chest pains at 9am. She was found a bed at 1.20am the next day.

Mrs Green said: "I was left on a trolley in a cupboard area with four other patients. I am not attacking the doctors or nurses. They are at breaking point. I am angry at the Trust for letting this happen. A nurse was crying while she was seeing to me.

"Another patient near me was a young man with a bandage on his head who was shouting and screaming at the nurses. I don't know how they cope."

Two reasons the Government gave a one-star rating were the hospital's inability to see 95 per cent of women with suspected breast cancer within 14 days and the fact the hospital has more than double the average number of cancelled operations.

To combat a bed shortage, the hospital has introduced a new system which is not widely used across the NHS.

It only cancels routine operations at the very last moment if beds are needed for emergency patients.

Dr David Spurr, medical director, believes this system -- unlike those more widely used with hospitals cancelling operations a week or 24 hours beforehand -- causes less cancellations and uses beds to their full capacity.

But the government has criticised the hospital for this system.

Dr Spurr said: "The new criteria has not been used to judge Bolton before -- but it may not be in the patients' best interests.

"We can make measures to give Bolton a better result in the league tables, but it will be at the expense of patients."

He added that it was vital to increase capacity but said finance alone would not solve the Trust's dilemma overnight.

The medical director, also a consultant physician, said the hospital needed more wards with more fully-trained staff.

Dr Spurr said: "I feel frustrated and so do the staff. Criteria and targets are not looking at the totality of what we are doing or the outcome of patient illnesses."

Dr Spurr, who hinted that foreign doctors and nurses could soon to be drafted in.

One staff nurse told the BEN how she had 24 beds to find for emergency patients.

She said: "It is horrendous. Where are we going to get those beds from?

Monday night was reported by staff to be the "worst night of the year so far" as nurses struggled to find patients a bed.

Mr Brunt said: "The volume of the work has gone up and cancellations for operations has doubled in a year.

"We undoubtedly need to increase capacity. We are now drawing up an action plan to address the area of what we didn't achieve. This is a matter of urgency."

Mr Brunt praised the exceptional doctors and nursing staff adding: "I want to reassure them that this low rating shouldn't reflect badly on them and their work."

Mr Brunt added: "We feel that we are not giving the patients the service that we would like to."

A&E expert Mr Moulton described staff moral as very low adding: "We all live in the town too and take this situation very personally.

"Patients waiting on trolleys demoralises staff. To see this day in, day out -- it is distressing for staff, the relatives and patients. We try to find them the beds, but then other operations get cancelled.

"Sometimes it does get to us when we go home after a heavy shift. Some of the patients are so rude and angry, but you can't help agreeing with them."

The hospital is now hoping to secure extra cash from the government to build three new wards to cope with an increasing catchment area from people living in Tyldesley, Atherton and Salford. Have you spent hours waiting for a hospital bed? Contact the BEN newsdesk on 01204 361270 or

e-mail us at bennewsdesk@lancashire.newsquest.co.uk