Pressure on Northern Ireland Emergency Departments Forces Difficult Choices
Doctors in Northern Ireland's emergency departments (EDs) are being compelled to decide which "very sick people" to prioritise due to significant pressures, according to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM).
Department of Health statistics covering the first quarter of 2026 reveal that no emergency department met the targets for seeing patients within the four-hour and 12-hour benchmarks.
The RCEM described the current figures for 2026 as "the worst they have ever been," characterising the situation in Northern Ireland's emergency departments as "utterly horrifying."
Speaking on Friday, Dr Michael Perry highlighted the challenging working environment faced by staff in these departments.
"We're basically pleading with our policy makers and our elected representatives in our government to allow us to do our jobs,"Dr Perry stated during an interview on Good Morning Ulster.
"Don't put us in this position where we have to choose out of two very sick people who we prioritise,"he added.
Dr Perry emphasised the high turnover of nursing staff in emergency departments, attributing it largely to the difficult working conditions.
"I've had staff very distressed where something's happened, they have tried their best to deliver the best care that they can, but because of the environment they're being forced to work in something adverse has happened,"he explained.
He also called for a long-term strategy to address what he termed the "perma-crisis" in emergency departments.
"If the executive agreed a multi-year budget it would allow a plan to be put in place to actually tackle this, rather than stumbling on through the same perma-crisis year on year,"Dr Perry said.
Such a multi-year budget would enable Stormont departments to plan longer-term spending. However, the executive has not agreed on a multi-year budget for over a decade.
Patient Waiting Times in Emergency Departments
Dr Perry noted that while emergency department challenges exist across the UK, Northern Ireland is "by far the outlier."
Statistics indicate that patients spent an average of 21 and a half hours in Altnagelvin's emergency department last month before admission to Londonderry hospital.
Similarly, waits exceeding 20 hours were recorded in the Causeway ED in Coleraine for patients later admitted to hospital wards.
Over 72,000 people attended emergency departments in Northern Ireland last month.
Patients who were subsequently admitted to hospital wards experienced ED stays three times longer than those treated and discharged.
The Department of Health statistics pertain to January, February, and March 2026.
They provide detailed information on time spent in EDs during these months, including monthly performance against the Department of Health's emergency care waiting times targets, as well as key milestones in a patient's ED journey such as time to triage and time to start of treatment.
