A&E at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary is on brink as bed and staff shortage leaves patients on trolleys for hours - your views online

"I can fault the A&E at the infirmary. I had a traumatic event there last year with a close relative and the staff were fantastic.”

The A&E at the ERI is feeling the strain

Hospital shortages

A&E at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary is on brink as bed and staff shortage leaves patients on trolleys for hours

Tasha Calina Mcphillips

Honestly, it's nothing new. As someone who has been to A&E a lot over the years, it's rare you are seen fast. And it's a lot of waiting in corridors because the hospital does not have capacity and is under staffed and over worked. Having one hospital that serves all the Lothians and Edinburgh is terrible. Covid and GP surgeries not opening up Is causing extra strain.

Carolyn Fielding

Well, when it's a 75-week waiting list to get an appointment to see what's wrong with you and you are in agony and your GP can't do any more for you because they don't know what's going on, you are left with little choice but to go to A&E. Staff are run ragged but that's been going on for years because of a shortage of funding, not just the pandemic.

Val McIver

Been the same since it opened. Happened to dad 11 years ago when he had a suspected heart attack and had hours to wait on a trolley in the corridor to see doctor. As usual, short-sighted planning with not enough beds or cubicles.

Dawn Bernard

Maybe if doctors started doing face to face appointments again this wouldn't be happening.

Jackie Brownlee

Don’t blame or pick on frontline staff. It’s funding from Westminster that dictates our budget. Staff are trying to do what they can or at least allowed to do with the right experience.

Deb Lancaster

I can fault the A&E at the infirmary. I had a traumatic event there last year with a close relative and the staff were fantastic.

Magdalena Poczekajska

I went on Sunday at 8pm and I left hospital 3am. It was extremely busy. Better avoid the hospital. Poor NHS staff – and the ventilation wasn't working, so it was like a hell.

Mandy Purves

I sat in A&E for eight hours and was finally admitted at round half past 10 at night the staff there are rushed off their feet but are still doing amazing job. It's not their fault, but that hospital definitely needs a new system put in place.

Michelle Reid

Open up the doctors surgeries and maybe we can see a doctor instead of attending hospitals for minor things. You can’t get an appointment at doctors these days, yet you never a soul in the building.

Mandy Grant

I arrived at hospital with an elderly gent at 4.30 in the afternoon. He was left in the corridor on a trolley till 11.15pm while the drunks were in cubicles sleeping it off … absolute disgrace.

Christina Bruce

I’d love to say this is new but I don’t think I’ve ever been to this hospital and had a quick turn around. It doesn’t help that you can’t get a doctors appointment with your GP without jumping through hoops, so people will be going to A&E worried and panicked to get the help they need.

Gaelic school

Police HQ and old hospital in running to be site of Edinburgh's new Gaelic school

Jeff Hamilton

Total waste of public money which could be better spent elsewhere.

Fiona A Sampson

The SNP are nuts. A Gaelic school – what next! I was at the Royal Infirmary last week. Saw two ambulances with only Gaelic written on them. Absolutely ridiculous. Hardly anybody speaks it and would confuse foreigners. They really need to get their act together wasting all this money on stupid ideas.

Toni Edwards

We need local authority nurseries – there’s no places for kids all over Edinburgh going to school next year.

Matt Stokes

The SNP are just copy and pasting Irish nationalist policies now. I guess that makes their core voters happy, even if it gets the rest of us nowhere.

Dave Moffat

The last thing Edinburgh needs, especially when money is tight or non existent. Get the basics sorted, like filthy streets.

Mike Somerville

This is what’s needed right enough, a school to teach a near enough dead language. Another waste of money from Sturgeon and her cronies - sort out your country.

Michael Gordon

Perhaps the finance minister could attend to learn mathematics, eh?

Paul Taylor

Gaelic school? How big is it going to be? Currently a massive 60,000 speak Gaelic, mainly as a second language.

Scott George

People banging on about the SNP should know the Gaelic Language Act of 2005 was brought to you by a Labour executive at Holyrood.