Revellers need to remember the NHS isn’t the ‘national hangover service’ - GP Taylor

For me, my New Year is very boring. Hootananny and an Irish Malt is all I need to see in 2023. With rising mortgages, heating bills, inflation, outrageous wage demands by trade unions and a Prime Minister in name only, this year, we all need an excuse to party.

Yet, having spent a night guarding a hospital casualty unit as a police officer, I know there will be many doctors and nurses who are dreading the evening.

The British have a habit of getting drunk at New Year and many end up on the floor of A&E in a pool of their own vomit. This puts more pressure on the doctors and nurses who are dealing with others who have life threatening conditions.

Heart attacks, strokes and car crashes do not stop just because it is New Year. We should remind ourselves that it is the National Health Service not the National Hangover Service.

Hospital admissions due to alcohol-abuse peak on New Year’s Eve. According to NHS statistics, normally in the region of 15 per cent of A&E admissions are alcohol-related, at New Year, that figure can shoot up to in excess of 70 per cent.

That is an awful number of drunk people clogging up beds and putting hospitals under additional stress.

As the seasonal Flu and Covid rise continues, this year we will see the NHS stretched to breaking point.

Having been admitted to hospital due to a heart condition on New Year’s Eve, I know what it is like. The nurses constantly apologised that the on-call doctors were dealing with drunks and that hopefully they would see me soon.

As my heart stopped and started as it tried to get back into rhythm, I could hear the screaming and crying in A&E as more drunks arrived shouting and swearing, demanding immediate service from an already overstretched medical team.

When the doctor finally got to me, she had to wipe the vomit off her shirt, courtesy of her previous drunken patient. As she quite rightly said, people feel the NHS is a safe place for drunks to sober up.

It is not just the NHS that is put under pressure. Police and Fire services are also in demand at New Year. Violent crime increases as parties get out of hand and physical and mental abuse is more prevalent. Alcohol can turn even the weakest person into a deranged superhuman.

When I was a police officer, I attended an emergency call to a house and was confronted by a shirtless man covered in blood holding a carving knife.

I knew the man well. He was usually a decent, honest hard-working man who had never been in trouble in his life. Now, he thought he was Rambo, willing to try and take out the first cop he could. Thankfully, when he realised it was me, he put the knife down and slept the drink off in the cells. The man came back a few days later and apologised. He had drunk so much; he didn’t know what he had done.

The scenes of New Year’s Eve chaos that we see on TV and in the newspapers can seem to be remote.

However, if you are in the midst of it and can smell the blood, vomit, and hear the sobs and cries of those involved, it is a different matter. This is the reality faced by the NHS and other emergency workers this and every New Year.

Surely, it is up to each of us to have a different attitude when it comes to celebrations at a crisis time like this. I know I am preaching to the choir with readers of the Yorkshire Post, but this year I feel it needs to be said. We all have to be responsible for our actions and tell others to do the same.

Since the start of Covid, the feeling is that people are becoming increasingly frustrated and angry. This is our first free Christmas for three years. It is believed that this freedom may cause some people to indulge in more booze than their bodies can cope with. None of us want to start 2023 in a hospital bed or prison cell.

There is no better time to change things in our lives than the New Year.

We can put behind us the great difficulties of the pandemic and the hardships we all faced. Studies from around the world suggest we have become angrier. Now is the time to change that.

The NHS and all emergency services are there for us. It is our duty not to cause any unnecessary problems due to our behaviour. This next year offers us all the opportunity to be more responsible, kinder, more tolerant, friendlier, and patient with ourselves and the world in which we live. Happy 2023.

GP Taylor is a writer and broadcaster who lives in Yorkshire.