A PATIENT suffered a cardiac arrest while waiting in a corridor for A&E treatment at Hereford County Hospital.

Wye Valley NHS Trust (WVT) says it will review the patient’s “sudden deterioration in condition” as a serious incident.

The patient survived after emergency treatment having gone into cardiac arrest while under care in the reception corridor of A&E last month.

WVT says A&E was “very busy” at the time but not working under internal incident status.

At times of high demand, the hospital will the A&E reception corridor, where ambulances deliver patients, as a temporary holding area.

Patients held in the corridor are attended to and monitored by both ambulance crews and hospital staff until they can be moved into A&E itself.

The hospital is working with a full set of wards again this week a norovirus outbreak under control.

Frome Ward  re-opened on Monday after an intensive deep clean having been the last still shut to norovirus.

Lugg ward re-opened last Thursday.

But visiting restrictions remain in place for patients who may have experienced of diarrhoea or vomiting symptoms until they have been “clear” for at least 48 hours.

WVT believes the bug behind the latest outbreak was brought in.

Patient pressures, complicated by the outbreak that saw wards shut and up to half of available beds lost, caused the trust to call an “internal incident” at the hospital for the second time in a month with admission numbers up by 16 per cent on the same time last year.  .

The closures of Lugg ward – for a second time – and Frome ward came just 24 hours after the trust had made the internal incident call.

By then, patients with norovirus symptoms were presenting at under pressure A&E and subsequently having to be admitted.

A number of staff were also off because of the bug.

The Hereford Times has reported how patient pressures saw back office staff at the hospital working on wards to help with non-clinical tasks like fetching, carrying and cleaning.

Over February 8 to 11, norovirus struck to shut Lugg Ward and Arrow Ward and closed Ross Community Hospital to admissions and transfers.

With up to four wards closed to admission at the outbreak’s height, patient flow through the hospital slowed down leading to poor performance and patient experience.

-  The Trust is also investigating a “guide wire” left inside a patient after the insertion of a chest drain.

An x-ray revealed the presence of the wire after the procedure in January.

The wire was removed and a respiratory consultant confirmed that no harm was caused to the patient.

An investigation is now underway with the incident reported to all relevant agencies.

Findings from the investigation will be put to the trust’s quality committee and board.