‘Back to usual’: Nurse describes busy shift after Sheffield drinkers return to pubs

Ian Carey told how it had been ‘almost back to the usual episode’ that night of people having too much to drink, becoming aggressive and ending up battered and bruised needing emergency care.

Speaking to Toby Foster on BBC Radio Sheffield’s Breakfast show, he said: “I worked a night shift Saturday, finishing at 3.30am on Sunday morning, and it was busy.

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“We’ve had a long period during Covid of being busy with other things and so the department changed, but we’re now back to almost the usual episode on a Saturday night of lots of people having a few too many and that often leads to a bit of aggression and they end up in the local emergency department battered and bruised, either under arrest or being escorted by police because they’ve been a victim of assault.

“It takes a lot of resources to deal with excess drinking in EDs and sadly we're back to that usual pattern of people turning up having had too much to drink.”

Mr Carey said that while some people had still needed emergency care after drinking too much at the height of the pandemic, police officers had been ‘pretty well absent’ from emergency departments earlier during the lockdown.

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But he told how he had counted a dozen police officers in the department on Saturday night, which he described as ‘a lot of resource’.

He added that it was’ great’ that pubs were reopening and he felt sorry for the region’s many responsible landlords, who had been having a ‘hard time’, but ‘as usual a few people abuse it too much and spoil it for the many’.

“If you turn up at an emergency department drunk you will be cared for, you will be treated with dignity, you will be treated as a human, but it can be hard work, as you can imagine,” he said.

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“Some people are happily drunk but just bruised and battered. Some people are abusive. It’s hard work.”