Patients at Finland’s emergency departments face average night-time waiting periods of five to six hours, with some hospitals reporting average waits of more than six hours, according to data obtained by Finnish public broadcaster Yle from regional healthcare authorities.
The figures cover August and show how long patients arriving between 10pm and 7am may have to wait for care. Among the hospitals included in the data, Turku recorded the longest average waiting time at six hours and 29 minutes, while Jyväskylä had the shortest, at four hours and 49 minutes. At Jorvi Hospital in Espoo, the average was six hours and four minutes.
Information collected from Finland’s wellbeing services counties suggests that night-time waiting times have changed little over several years, raising concerns about how long patients must remain in emergency departments before receiving treatment.
When Yle visited Jorvi Hospital to speak to patients, some described pain, uncertainty and frustration as they waited for medical attention.
Marcos Wichert, a Brazilian who has lived in Espoo for six years, arrived after injuring his arm while dismantling a trampoline in his garden. He suspected the arm was broken and had already spent more than two hours waiting to see a doctor without receiving pain medication when he spoke to Yle.
“I thought I’d get help faster,” he said.
Heini Nurmi, another Espoo resident, arrived at Jorvi shortly before 10pm with chest pain. She was taken aback by the estimated waiting time displayed on a screen in the waiting room, which indicated that her visit could take five and a half hours.
“I can’t wait five and a half hours, which is the estimated visit duration shown on the screen in the waiting room. I need to go to my children,” she told Yle.
Nurmi said four hours should be the maximum time a patient spends in an emergency department.
“Six hours is an absurd amount of time to wait for urgent care,” she said.
Kimmo Suojanen, the regional chief physician responsible for Jorvi’s emergency department, acknowledged the challenges but said the time patients spend at the hospital does not necessarily mean they are waiting without any medical work taking place.
He explained to Yle that much of the work involved in treating patients happens away from the waiting room. Staff may be analysing X-rays, consulting specialists or waiting for blood test results before deciding on the next steps in a patient’s treatment.
Patients arriving at night can also have more complicated conditions than those who come in during the day, Suojanen said. These cases may require several examinations and procedures, adding to the time needed to assess and treat each patient.
Despite the long waits, Suojanen said the situation at Jorvi has improved considerably compared with previous years, when patients could face waiting times of up to 10 hours.
“There are far fewer completely unreasonable waiting times than just a few years ago,” he told Yle.
However, Maaret Castren, a former chief of operations at HUS, the hospital district serving Helsinki and the surrounding region, and professor emerita of emergency medicine, said the effects of prolonged waiting times on patients should not be underestimated. She pointed to research showing that lengthy waits can be particularly harmful to older people.
Castren argued that Finland has not given the problem sufficient attention, despite calls from emergency medicine professionals to move patients out of emergency departments within four hours.
In her view, reducing waiting times should be a responsibility shared across the hospital rather than treated as a target for emergency department staff alone.
“This should be a priority for the entire hospital, not just a goal for the emergency department,” she told Yle.
Castren is currently a member of parliament for the governing National Coalition Party and intends to stand in next spring’s elections. Her comments in the report draw on her previous professional experience in emergency medicine.
The experiences of Wichert and Nurmi illustrate how long waits can affect patients differently, depending on their symptoms, circumstances and ability to remain at the hospital.
Wichert eventually left Jorvi around midnight after spending four hours and 40 minutes there. An X-ray showed that his arm was not broken, although it remained swollen and painful.
Nurmi, meanwhile, decided to leave after waiting for an hour and a half without seeing either a nurse or a doctor. She later told Yle that her chest pain had eased by the following day and that she did not expect to need medical attention for the time being.
Her decision to leave came before a medical professional had assessed her symptoms. Chest pain can have serious causes, so improvement in symptoms alone does not establish that medical evaluation is unnecessary.
The August figures provide a picture of the pressure patients face during overnight visits, while the accounts from Jorvi show the personal consequences of waiting for care. Although hospital staff say examinations, test results and specialist consultations account for part of the time, the patients’ experiences highlight the difficulty of spending several hours in an emergency department, particularly when symptoms are painful or family responsibilities make a prolonged stay difficult.
