Adrian Boyle

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Adrian Boyle is a British consultant and emergency physician at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, England. In October 2022 he succeeded Katherine Henderson as the President of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine. [1]

Contents

Education

Adrian Boyle qualified as a doctor from the University of Southampton and undertook house jobs in Southhampton and Portsmouth. The registrar for his Portsmouth house job was former Royal College President Clifford Mann. He also undertook medical training in Tygerberg and holds a masters in epidemiology and biostatistics, as well as a Doctorate on domestic violence, both from the University of Cambridge. [2]

Research and career

Prior to becoming president, Dr Boyle was previously Vice President of Policy. [3] As Vice President, Boyle highlighted how more than a thousand patients a day, spent at least 12 hours waiting in A&E, during 2021 and called for action and investment in social care. [4] Additionally, Dr Boyle was a key author of the report produced by RCEM in November 2021, which demonstrated that overcrowding and extended stays had seen over 4,500 excess deaths from 2020 to 2021. [5]

As President, Boyle has spoken about the significant risks that excessive waiting times posed to elderly patients, describing hospitals as "lobster traps". [6] [7] He has also highlighted how Ambulances were becoming "wards on wheels" and described the hospital system as 'collapsing'. [8] [9] In December 2022, he spoke about the anxieties within the healthcare sector, surrounding the nurses' and ambulance strikes, and criticised NHS bosses' recommendation for hospitals to free up more beds. [10]

In the same month Dr Boyle issued a statement alongside four other medical royal colleges calling for the UK government to increase and prioritise investment in ambulance services, mental health, primary care and social care. [11]

In January 2023, Dr Boyle told the Health Select Committee that December 2022 had been the NHS' worst-ever December. [12]

In July 2023, Dr Boyle criticised the NHS England’s urgent and emergency care winter plan, writing in the Independent that it will do little to resolve the current situation . [13]

In September of the same year, Boyle branded Emergency Department waiting times as a ‘matter of national shame’. [14]


In April, 2024, Boyle warned that excessively long waits continued to ‘put patients at risk of serious harm’. [15]

Selected publications


Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Triage</span> Process of determining the priority of patients treatments based on the severity of their condition

In medicine, triage is a process by which care providers such as medical professionals and those with first aid knowledge determine the order of priority for providing treatment to injured individuals and/or inform the rationing of limited supplies so that they go to those who can most benefit from it. Triage is usually relied upon when there are more injured individuals than available care providers, or when there are more injured individuals than supplies to treat them.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emergency department</span> Medical treatment facility specializing in emergency medicine

An emergency department (ED), also known as an accident and emergency department (A&E), emergency room (ER), emergency ward (EW) or casualty department, is a medical treatment facility specializing in emergency medicine, the acute care of patients who present without prior appointment; either by their own means or by that of an ambulance. The emergency department is usually found in a hospital or other primary care center.

In the United Kingdom, junior doctors are qualified medical practitioners working whilst engaged in postgraduate training. The period of being a junior doctor starts when they qualify as a medical practitioner following graduation with a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery degree and start the UK Foundation Programme. It culminates in a post as a consultant, a general practitioner (GP), or becoming a SAS Doctor, such as a specialty doctor or Specialist post.

Acute medicine, also known as acute internal medicine (AIM), is a specialty within internal medicine concerned with the immediate and early specialist management of adult patients with a wide range of medical conditions who present in hospital as emergencies. It developed in the United Kingdom in the early 2000s as a dedicated field of medicine, together with the establishment of acute medical units in numerous hospitals. Acute medicine is distinct from the broader field of emergency medicine, which is concerned with the management of all people attending the emergency department, not just those with internal medicine diagnoses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Royal College of Emergency Medicine</span>

The Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) is an independent professional association of emergency physicians in the United Kingdom which sets standards of training and administers examinations for emergency medicine. The patron is the Princess Royal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scottish Ambulance Service</span> Scotlands public ambulance services

The Scottish Ambulance Service is part of NHS Scotland, which serves all of Scotland's population. The Scottish Ambulance Service is governed by a special health board and is funded directly by the Health and Social Care Directorates of the Scottish Government.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Western Eye Hospital</span> Hospital in England

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An Emergency Care Practitioner (ECP) generally come from a background in paramedicine and most have additional academic qualifications, usually at university, with enhanced skills in medical assessment and extra clinical skills over and above those of a standard paramedic or qualified nurse. It has been recommended by the College of Paramedics that ECPs be trained to PgDip or MSc level, although not all are. Evidence of the best way to target Emergency Care Practitioners is limited with utilisation of traditional Ambulance dispatch codes not always being shown to be most effective and referrals from GPs also potentially failing to deliver management of demand that would be appropriate for this different level of practitioner. Evidence however clearly demonstrates that in discreet groups of patients the use of these extended role staff responding to emergency calls can reduce admissions and thus improve patient outcomes as well as delivering a clear cost saving to the NHS.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pre-hospital emergency medicine</span>

Pre-hospital emergency medicine, also referred to as pre-hospital care, immediate care, or emergency medical services medicine, is a medical subspecialty which focuses on caring for seriously ill or injured patients before they reach hospital, and during emergency transfer to hospital or between hospitals. It may be practised by physicians from various backgrounds such as anaesthesiology, emergency medicine, intensive care medicine and acute medicine, after they have completed initial training in their base specialty.

Scottish Specialist Transport and Retrieval (ScotSTAR) is the Scottish national service for adult, paediatric and neonatal patients. The service is run by the Scottish Ambulance Service and brings together NHS Scotland's three specialist transport and retrieval services: the Scottish Neonatal Transport Service (SNTS), the Transport of Critically Ill and Injured Children Service and the Emergency Medical Retrieval Service (EMRS). The service operates from a bespoke base near Glasgow and expects to be able to cater for 2,200 critically ill children and adults every year.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Manjeet Singh Riyat</span> British A&E consultant (died 2020)

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">BASICS Scotland</span>

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References

  1. Beedle, James (2022-03-17). "The Royal College of Emergency Medicine elects its fourth President". RCEM. Retrieved 2023-08-10.
  2. "EMJ interview with new RCEM President, Adrian Boyle | from the president". 13 October 2022.
  3. https://rcem.ac.uk/dr-adrian-begins-term-as-rcem-president/
  4. Lay, Kat (23 June 2023). "Thousand A&E patients a day wait 12 hours or more" via www.thetimes.co.uk.
  5. https://res.cloudinary.com/studio-republic/images/v1637155630/RCEM_Why_Emergency_Department_Crowding_Matters/RCEM_Why_Emergency_Department_Crowding_Matters.pdf
  6. Johnson, Alan (November 14, 2022). "Hospitals now 'bad places' that 'harm' vulnerable patients, warns top A&E doctor". mirror.
  7. "'A&E is absolute chaos - I spent 15 hours on a trolley'". BBC News. December 8, 2022.
  8. "My mum's 40-hour wait to get to A&E with hip break". BBC News. December 1, 2022.
  9. McFadden, Brendan (November 26, 2022). "About 4,000 patients a day are spending more than 12 hours in A&E, top doctor warns". inews.co.uk.
  10. "Hospitals told to free up beds for ambulance strike". BBC News. December 16, 2022.
  11. Limb, Matthew (2022). "NHS must prioritise what it can deliver under current constraints, say doctors' leaders". BMJ. 379: o2981. doi:10.1136/bmj.o2981. PMID   36593560. S2CID   254451290.
  12. "Dreaded Covid-flu twindemic cost NHS this winter". 24 January 2023.
  13. "NHS England's plan is not enough to avert disaster this winter | Adrian Boyle". The Independent. 2023-07-30. Retrieved 2023-08-10.
  14. "400,000 faced 24 hours in A&E last year as NHS chaos branded 'matter of national shame'". 25 September 2023.
  15. "Reality of NHS A&E departments as expert warns patients are in 'grave danger' | Express.co.uk". 9 April 2024.