Canberra Hospital’s busiest day in emergency department

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The Emergency Department at the Canberra Hospital recorded its busiest day ever on Sunday after windy weather caused chaos.

A total of 254 people presented to the hospital at Woden with a range of ailments.

ACT Health Director-General Peggy Brown praised staff for their response.

“This is an enormous number of people presenting within one day and I commend all the staff who worked yesterday through this busy day,” she said.

“There were a number of factors that made it a particularly busy day and we had an overwhelming number of people presenting with quite serious conditions.”

The windy weather was being blamed for the spike in visits.

“There was a rise in asthma-related presentations,” Dr Brown said.

“At this time of year, we would normally expect to see somewhere around four asthma-related presentations a day, however with the change in weather over the weekend we saw around 15 asthma-related presentations, some of which were very serious, life-threatening presentations.

“The change in weather also seemed to encourage people outdoors and unfortunately, this did result in a large number of minor traumas that needed semi-urgent medical attention.”

People who do not have urgent, life-threatening conditions are being advised to use alternate treatments such as the walk-in centres or after-hours GP services.