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Tackling drunks is draining A&E unit’s resources

10:00pm Wednesday 8th September 2010 in


AN A&E expert claims a Colchester hospital is having to deal with drunks every night.

It comes as new figures reveal more than one in three young adults drink to get drunk.

According to research commissioned by alcohol awareness charity Drinkaware, 36 per cent of young people drink with the specific intention of getting drunk.

However, three-quarters of 18 to 24-year-olds said they regret their drunken behaviour, including not knowing how they got home and ending up in hospital.

Helen Krysinski, accident and emergency matron at Colchester General Hospital, said the department dealt with five or six incidents per night every weekend.

“We have a fair amount of people admitted with alcohol intoxication and problems related to that, such as assaults or fights, especially with the younger age group,” she explained.

“Alcohol makes people change their character and they become more aggressive, drain resources, nursing staff, security and the police.

“People who are intoxicated are the more challenging patients and they come in with multiple issues and are usually not co-operative.

“It happens every night and it is also not very nice for other people in the hospital who have to listen to that abuse.”

Drinkaware will be launching its new Why Let Good Times Go Bad? campaign at 16,000 pubs across the country this month to challenge the attitudes and social acceptability of drunkenness among young adults.

Insp Paul Butcher, of Colchester police, said: “We hardly ever have to arrest someone on a night out that is sober, so it is the people who are drunk who take up our resources.

“People of a certain age want to drink, but it is the minority who get very drunk who react badly.”

Comments(17)

totallyfootball says...
11:54am Thu 9 Sep 10

Why should staff at the hospitals have to deal with that. I think the simple option would be invoice them £100 for the ambulance that they turn up in and then £20 an hour to treat them. And then the police could collect them once they have been discharged and charge them with public affray or disorder and that would come with a fixed penalty of £80 plus the option of a night in the cells. Lets ditch the kid gloves and hit the problem head on, with costs like that it make wake them up and reduce the igmorance and the somewhat arrogant attitude of these mindless people!

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Boris says...
12:20pm Thu 9 Sep 10

I agree with you, totallyfootball, but will the drunks understand the logic of what you propose? Here is another idea. At the key times, have a couple of police on duty at the hospital with their own cell(s) in the A&E area. The moment anyone (drunk or not) threatens a member of hospital staff, put them in the cell till they are sober enough to be treated. This would sober them up pretty quickly. If someone's life is in danger then they will have to be treated anyway, but otherwise they can wait. Meanwhile the police can consider whether to charge them with assault, threatening behaviour, or whatever. Plenty of witnesses, a 100% clear-up rate, the police should be happy to do this.

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Myrtle says...
12:27pm Thu 9 Sep 10

Two very sensible comments. Let us live in hope that they may be acted upon.
Sorry , but I have no time for drunks who think they can abuse hospital staff.
Personally , I would stick them all in a Drunk Tank and hose them down with cold water until they do sober up.
Selfish , stupid fools who think they can behave badly then claim it was the drink that made them do it.
Lastly , a big Thank You to Helen and her team who have to put up with this disgusting behaviour.

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totallyfootball says...
12:28pm Thu 9 Sep 10

Boris wrote:
I agree with you, totallyfootball, but will the drunks understand the logic of what you propose? Here is another idea. At the key times, have a couple of police on duty at the hospital with their own cell(s) in the A&E area. The moment anyone (drunk or not) threatens a member of hospital staff, put them in the cell till they are sober enough to be treated. This would sober them up pretty quickly. If someone's life is in danger then they will have to be treated anyway, but otherwise they can wait. Meanwhile the police can consider whether to charge them with assault, threatening behaviour, or whatever. Plenty of witnesses, a 100% clear-up rate, the police should be happy to do this.
How about a combination of both Boris? Why should the tax payer keep footing the bill, let the offender pay for it? And why should the hospital resources be stretched when it should be dealing with heart attacks and accidents? Its time to make the offenders pay, I am sure that a bill heading towards £300 would be enough to sober anyone up.

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25414nora says...
2:49pm Thu 9 Sep 10

Just return to the old tried and tested pub opening, and closing hours....Last orders 10.50. Close at 11.pm sharp..."IT WORKS"

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totallyfootball says...
2:58pm Thu 9 Sep 10

Imagine that Nora!

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snoswad says...
5:24pm Thu 9 Sep 10

are we talking drunks?why are drunks being treated at a&e.
have these people been injured?
surely just being drunk dosn't mean go to a&e.
how do they get to a&e?
Have i missed something here?

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romantic says...
5:29pm Thu 9 Sep 10

Are you mad, Nora. Take away all that money which the kids spend? They're the only ones who've got any money, especially if still living at home. Think of the effects on the poor licence holders!

Seriously, I'd go along with what TF and Boris say. Yes, have a police presence at the hospital. Yes, invoice people who end up at A & E through drinking too much, and stick them in a cell either while they wait to be seen there, or when they come out. We've behaved with kid gloves on this for a while. How about also invoicing the pubs and clubs in the town centre? They should also share the responsibility for this. They rake in the cash which gets spent, then take no responsibility for the effects - not just the people who end up in A & E, but the litter, vomit, noise etc.

A bit more police presence within the town might also help. It's all very well having vanloads of cops sitting on Queen Street, but it does mean they tend to be responding when problems have already kicked off. Some of those problems could be prevented if drunks are spotted before they start trouble.

Listen, there's no easy one-line panacea to this. The fact is that people have always got drunk and got into fights. 30 years ago, they'd have probably just have crawled home, or got chucked in a cell for the night. It's not any worse now, but people head for A & E quite often when they probably don't need to. A charge for that might not make any impact at the time, but a few days later it might sink in, who knows.

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Boris says...
1:05am Fri 10 Sep 10

Totallyfootball, I agree, as well as being deprived of their liberty, and being made to wait for treatment, these gross brutes should be charged several hundred pounds at least for their disgusting behaviour. I had in mind that the magistrates would impose fines of say £500 or £1000, but I'd go along with your invoicing idea too. But it is important that any act of aggression or threatening behaviour should go to court, and anyone found guilty will get a criminal record, which in some cases could lead to them losing their jobs - and that would serve them right.
Romantic, you say people have always got into fights, and it is true, but why is the problem so bad in Britain? Most other countries don't have this problem to the same extent.

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totallyfootball says...
9:18am Fri 10 Sep 10

In my younger days there were always fights but it was sorted on the spot, rarely was an ambulance called and as like today by the time the police turned up it was all over and life had moved on. I was no angel on the drink front and liked a few pints but I never had to be taken home, asked to leave an establishment or needed an ambulance. I knew when I had reached my limit and went home, its different today because in some peoples eyes they have not had a good night unless they have been thrown out of a pub or club, beaten someone to a pulp or themselves ended up in A&E. Its not what our hospitals were built for and should be addressed now, if you are going to binge drink and become a nuisance to others then you must pay.

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romantic says...
4:50pm Fri 10 Sep 10

Boris wrote:
Totallyfootball, I agree, as well as being deprived of their liberty, and being made to wait for treatment, these gross brutes should be charged several hundred pounds at least for their disgusting behaviour. I had in mind that the magistrates would impose fines of say £500 or £1000, but I'd go along with your invoicing idea too. But it is important that any act of aggression or threatening behaviour should go to court, and anyone found guilty will get a criminal record, which in some cases could lead to them losing their jobs - and that would serve them right. Romantic, you say people have always got into fights, and it is true, but why is the problem so bad in Britain? Most other countries don't have this problem to the same extent.
Boris, I don't have an easy answer to that! The idea of relaxing the licensing hours was to move towards the European way, but it seems to fail to some extent because of the British attitudes to drinking. For a lot of people, it's basically drink until you fall over and then get your mates to keep you topped up.

There are places where it works - best example in town has to be The Castle. Open until 2.00, no door staff, no loud music and very little trouble as far as I am aware. The people there late at night are mainly young, with a few oldies thrown in. That seems to work.

Why other places don't work so well, I don't really know. Maybe it's the loud music, but then maybe I'm just an old fogey.

Regarding fining etc, I think it would be a good lesson for some of the people that there are repercussions to their actions. It seems to take a lot to get arrested in town at night, in fact. I know it takes somebody off the street for hours sorting out the paperwork, but sometimes I'm amazed that people don't get carted off. Like TF, I've certainly not been an angel, but we at least had the sense to tone it down if we saw a copper! Now it doesn't seem to make any difference. Maybe I am just an old fogey, starting to sound like my grandad! A night in the cell and a fine the first time; much bigger fine if it happens again. Third time, really come down. You need to give people some chance to change and nobody is served well if some 18-year old can't get a job because of one drunken night, but the kids do also need to have the idea that they will get picked up and fined if they're out of line.

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Anna Key says...
4:13pm Sat 11 Sep 10

A lot of sensible comment and intelligent suggestions here. I must admit I was once in favour of relaxing the licence laws, I naively hoped it might lead to a more relaxed drinking culture. It clearly hasn't worked like that. The old pub hours wont return though, the big powerful breweries will make sure of that. Not sure any of us can really answer the question: What is it with us Brits?

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Boris says...
8:41pm Sat 11 Sep 10

I suspect our aggression stems right back to the early days of colonialism, when it suited monarchs from Elizabeth I onwards to have a steady supply of soldiers and sailors ready and willing to go and bash the French and the Spaniards, steal their treasure, and take over their colonies. These fighting men were cannon-fodder, so as they got killed or maimed, fresh troops were cajoled or tricked into taking the king's shilling. If there were no battles to be fought, before long these men would pick fights with each other or with the subject people. They would round up captives in Africa and transport them as slaves to north and south America. All of that has been to a large extent airbrushed out of history, but our army remains essentially an expeditionary force, intended mainly to protect or re-establish colonies in far away countries of which we and they know little.
To be successful in this, the men had to be brutalised, and the recipe for this was plenty of fighting.
In modern times, only a small proportion of young people joins the army, but the legacy remains of aggression being an admired virtue.

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Anna Key says...
2:42pm Sun 12 Sep 10

That is an interesting observation, and I am not dismissing its validity. But of all the European colonialists (excepting of course the fascism of the 20s and 30s) the most violent and brutal was surely Belgium. Does Brussels have this problem?

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Boris says...
11:17pm Sun 12 Sep 10

True, the Belgian Congo was the most violent of all the European colonies in Africa. Belgium only had two colonies, the Congo and Ruanda-Urundi (now two countries, each with its own very violent recent history).
But in 1960/62 Belgium handed over, and since then has had no colonial ambitions.
I have worked in Brussels, and even though their beer is much stronger than ours, I don't remember ever seeing or hearing of drunk people causing problems. People enjoy their drink but in moderation. It may be relevant that in most of the pubs in Brussels, when you go to the gents, you have to run the gauntlet of a formidable lady who will charge you for use of the facilities. Her stern face, with the implied threat of a greatly increased charge if you fail to leave the toilet as clean as you found it, probably helps to encourage sensible drinking.

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Sdapeze says...
12:04pm Mon 13 Sep 10

I blame it all on Labour. It was all OK until they got into power. Just another Labour failure that the government has got to sort out.

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Boris says...
11:32pm Mon 13 Sep 10

Sdapeze, you are a dreamer. Wake up.

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