A doctor working in a Thai hospital emergency room says the department has been overwhelmed for the past two to three months. Even with more than 10 doctors rostered on the morning shift, the team cannot examine patients fast enough.
The doctor set out the daily staffing in a Facebook post, alongside photographs of patients lying on trolleys. Some of the queue had spilt out of the department and into the area outside.
The post gives the roster as more than 10 doctors on the morning shift, eight on the afternoon shift and four overnight. The doctor believes that is a heavier roster than almost any other hospital runs.
On some days the afternoon team does not eat until 11pm. The overnight team only sees numbers fall at about 4am, and patients keep arriving through the night.
The department also takes referrals from across the country on top of its own walk-ins. Staff handle cases involving methamphetamine, cannabis and kratom, along with a large number of psychiatric patients each day. Accident cases are high as well, which the doctor says already puts the hospital level with any other.
The post ends with a question to staff elsewhere. The doctor asks whether other hospitals are seeing the same surge. He also asks how departments running only one or two doctors a shift get through their patients.
Commenters replied with messages of support for the doctor and the wider hospital team, several telling them to remember to eat.
The post lands in the middle of a public argument about state hospital waiting times that The Thaiger has been covering through August. On 17 August, staff at a Khon Kaen hospital were found to have mocked a patient’s complaint online. A nurse involved apologised the same day, after the woman later died.
Neither the doctor nor the hospital is identified in the post, and the name on the screenshot is blurred.
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Source: The Thaiger (Thai)
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