NURSES and GPs in County Durham are being told to act as first responders ahead of ambulances as North-East paramedics struggle to cope with soaring demand.
Local MPs have branded the move by clinical commissioning groups (CCG) in County Durham as ‘desperate measures,’ while a councillor said people in rural communities might as well just call for an undertaker.
In an email sent to GP practices in the Durham Dales, Easington and Sedgefield CCG and North Durham CCG areas, nurses and GPs were told to act as first responders to help prevent ‘tragic’ cases of people waiting for an ambulance with no pain relief.
In response to the unprecedented measure, North Durham MP Kevan Jones said: ‘NEAS needs to urgently address why it’s seen an increase in calls and particularly whether it’s a result of other decisions in the NHS making it harder for patients to access services.’
Sedgefield MP Phil Wilson said: ‘These are desperate measures which go to prove that the NHS is completely underfunded.’
Weardale county councillor John Shuttleworth said residents in rural areas already struggle to get doctor appointments and are not getting the ambulance service they are paying for. He said he had little faith GPs and nurses would get there any quicker, adding: ‘Never mind calling for an ambulance, they might as well just call for an undertaker.’
• A rapidly developing flu crisis means pressures on the NHS have ‘escalated rapidly’ over the holiday period with hospitals experiencing significant bed shortages.
Dr Nick Scriven, president of the Society for Acute Medicine (SAM), said yesterday: ‘Since the bank holiday things have escalated rapidly and we are on the cusp of a major issue at least as bad as last year when it was described by the Red Cross as a “humanitarian crisis”.’
With flu cases rising by 67 per cent in the past week, and 3.7 million adults coming down with symptoms, public health officials said yesterday that they are now ‘more scared than we have ever been’ about the risk of a severe flu outbreak.
