HIGH numbers of people presenting themselves to the Royal Victoria Hospital led to calls this week for available staff to be called in.

Tuesday saw the Royal Victoria Hospital under “extreme pressure” with long waits and extra nursing staff required to manage an “increasing number of sick patients.”

Both the Adult Emergency Department and The Children’s Hospital at the Royal appealed to the public to only attend if the need was urgent and required immediate attention.

The appeal echoes a widespread call from Health Trusts across the North who are facing significant pressures and urging the public to only attend the ED in an emergency.

A spokesperson from the Belfast Trust said the Children’s Hospital had “near 200 children in one day” in a 24-hour period this winter, compared to the pre-Covid figures of “50-60 children” on average during a very busy day in winter. 

The spokesperson confirmed that the situation is reflected in the Adult Emergency Department.

Historically, winter has been the busiest period for the HSC and NHS. A spokesperson for the Belfast Trust explained that, due to staff facing extreme pressures, additional nursing staff were requested in the Adult Emergency Department, both registered and unregistered.

“There are so many children who have winter viruses that the emergency department in the children’s became extremely busy, but we didn’t have to ask for staff to come in for them,” the spokesperson said.

“The adult emergency department in the Royal itself is about four times the size of it and can become quite busy very quickly, at a moment’s notice people can just turn up and then we have to make the decision to ask for more staff to come in.

“The amount of people coming to our hospitals, the Royal, the Mater and the Children’s Emergency Departments has been so high that we just thought we better get more staff in. It's not a case that we were unstaffed at the time but that there were so many people turned up that the staff there probably wouldn’t be able to deal with everything as effectively unless we brought more staff in.

“We can never tell how many people are going to turn up on an hour-to-hour basis. It is hour to hour; this is how bad it is.”

The additional staff requested were able to provide additional support to the Emergency Department on Tuesday night, however the spokesperson stated: “It is still an extraordinarily difficult thing to manage with so many people coming to the hospital over a 24-hour period.”