Adapted from BMJ 21-28 March 2026
Throughout the UK, Accident and Emergency Departments are in crisis.
A survey by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine was sent a survey to their members in March.
51% of the 80 respondents said that their department was fairly or very unsafe and 28% said that their department was very or fairly safe.
88% said that overcrowding was a daily occurrence. 96% said overcrowding happened several days a week.
Meanwhile in Scotland, Fiona Hunter, the Vice President of the Scottish branch of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine. In 2024 the college showed that 818 excess deaths occurred due to long waits in Accident and Emergency Departments.
The Scottish Liberal Democrats analysis reported that in 2025 there were 871 deaths associated with a wait of 12 hours or more for hospital admission in Accident and Emergency Departments.
My comments: A lot of A and E attendees are people who would be better served by Primary Care than A and E. General Practitioners are under strain, and have limited appointments in weekday and out of hours services by allocating fixed appointments, instead of absorbing the work regardless of ability to provide good care. This is a way of coping and I don’t blame them. The result however, is ever overflowing A and E departments. I know that some areas have GPs on site in hospitals to deal with some patients but this doesn’t happen everywhere.
Diabetes Diet 