ACCIDENT and emergency staff in BCP have expressed their concern over growing visitor numbers as they brace for the summer holidays despite already facing ‘winter pressure levels’.

As the number of visitors to the region increases, A and E staff are bracing themselves for a surge in demand as people head to the south coast on holiday.

Staff at Dorset University Hospitals in Bournemouth and Poole are urging everyone to call 111 or minor injuries before heading to A and E.

Senior sister Jennifer Wilkins said: “We are seeing a huge increase in the number of patients compared to what we usually see at this time of year.

“There is a big difference in the number of people attending and we are expecting that to get worse.

“We are at winter pressure levels now and we’re expecting that to increase more as the summer holidays kick in, more people are off work and large numbers of visitors come to the area.”

The number of patients being admitted to hospitals in the conurbation has increased by 15 per cent, according to University Hospitals Dorset.

Royal Bournemouth Hospital has revealed they are averaging around 260 patients per day at the moment, which is a 15 per cent increase based on what they would usually expect for this time of year and when compared to 2019.

Consultant in Emergency at the Royal Bournemouth Hospital, Dr Carley Bowman-Burns said: “At the moment it’s difficult to determine the reason for the increase in attendances, we’ve seen a rise in demand over the last few years - clearly we had a bit of a blip last year with the onset of the pandemic and we knew a lot of people were staying away from hospitals.”

An influx in visitor numbers to the conurbation can be expected during school holidays and over the summer however, Senior sister Jennifer Wilkins explained that this has been exacerbated by the pandemic.

She said: “People can’t go away on holiday so they’re coming to beautiful Bournemouth so our population has increased in the area with holidaymakers and visitors to the area, who previously might have gone abroad and now can’t.

“When school holidays hit, we’re expecting a lot.”

Waiting times are being exacerbated by infection control protocol and coronavirus guidelines, healthcare staff at the hospitals explained that the rise in demand is adding to this pressure.

Dr Bowman-Burns said: “Even though there’s an increase in demand we are still having to observe the social distancing and all the infection protection and control so our ward bed base is a bit more limited because some people can only go to certain bays once they’ve been tested and it’s come back as negative.”

To reduce the stress and strain on medical staff at the accident and emergency units there are a number of services available to patients that need to see a clinician.

Jennifer said: “We really need people to continue to call 111.

“A lot of the time you’ll be offered a GP appointment and we have primary care practitioners that are based in our urgent treatment centre here on site so you can be given an appointment there.

“We also have some pre-booked appointments in our minor injuries units across the county and we really want to encourage people to make use of all of those services and you can phone and make an appointment at any of those.

“Obviously if it’s an emergency we want to see you and we don’t want to send people away but actually you could find that you have less time to wait to be seen by a clinician if you phone and pre-book an appointment at one of those services.”

All of the minor injuries units across Dorset and Hampshire have pre-booked appointments that allow you to cut down waiting times.

Just two weeks ago, Royal Bournemouth Hospital was seeing more than 300 people per day.

At Poole, this average is around 216 patients per day and again an increase.

In the case of an emergency call 999.