Accident and Emergency

Reaching the unreachable

As you can imagine, an accident and emergency (A&E) department on a Saturday night is at the front line of treating clients with different social issues. As many as seven out of ten patients attending are there partly because they have consumed too much alcohol.

Often it is these same people who find themselves back at A&E time and time again, at a cost of £0.5 billion to the NHS. Additionally, around a fifth of people admitted to hospital for non-alcohol related conditions have been drinking at levels which may affect their recovery.

But it is recovery that counts, both in economic and social reintegration terms. Better still, Turning Point believes that efforts should be made to nip alcohol misuse and other dependencies in the bud through interventions that prevent such problems spiralling out of control.

We have always believed that to stand a chance of helping people with a problem you must start at grass roots level; in this case A&E departments and the staff who are the first point of contact in treating clients with various social health issues.

We train hospital staff about alcohol dependence, brief interventions and referring to other services, thereby helping to reach patients for whom alcohol may be an underlying issue. In some places Turning Point is training A&E nurses to make brief interventions at the point of treatment – while removing stitches, for instance. This is an effective way to reach people who may not otherwise approach an alcohol service.

The Royal College of Physicians recommended a national alcohol strategy that included many of the elements that Turning Point’s hospital interventions can offer.