Brighton A&E unit uses Twitter in a two-day campaign to educate people about unnecessary A&E visits
Staff at the Royal Sussex County Hospital have launched a two-day “tweet-a-thon” with the aim of educating people about unnecessary visits to busy A&E wards.
The staff are tweeting about events as they happen in the hospital emergency department, reporting what is considered a real emergency and what is not.
Latest tweets have detailed emergency cases, including a Tweet about "an elderly man who was brought in by ambulance with a severe chest infection and has been taken to ITU"
Others examples have highlighted when a case is not considered an emergency: "A man has come into A&E with a stomach ache as he could not get a GP appointment. Remember the department is for emergencies only"
The move comes as reports suggest as many as one in four people are being seen in the department, who could have been self-treated or been seen elsewhere by another health service. This puts emergency staff under more pressure which could lead to delays in treatment for other, more critical, patients.