SWINDON'S Great Western Hospital has admitted it will be under pressure to find enough beds for patients for the next year.

GWH spokesman Chris Birdsall said the hospital was once again full to capacity. But he said that the burden would be eased when a new 128-bed treatment centre opens in spring next year.

It follows news Lyneham mother June Rogers was forced to spend almost a week on a trolley because there were no beds.

The 41-year-old NVQ assessor was rushed to hospital with kidney and gall bladder pain and difficulty breathing on March 3.

By March 5 she had still not received tests and returned home for the weekend.

When she went back to the hospital at the beginning of the next week there still not a bed available and she was put on a trolley in the corner of a four-bed ward.

Her RAF sergeant husband Chris, who flew back from Bosnia, made several complaints.

He said: "It's appalling, June was in terrible pain and actually passed out once, yet everyone seemed to just forget about her."

Mrs Rogers is now in Linnet Ward, where her condition is said to be satisfactory.

Her husband said: "She has received excellent treatment from the nurses. We are waiting for the results of a CAT scan to see what will happen next."

Mr Birdsall said: "It's a rolling programme. We never know from one hour to the next any spare beds we'll have. Patient safety is always our utmost concern."

Paul Bentley, GWH's director of human resources, apologised to Mrs Rogers for her wait but stressed she was on a ward and received the medical attention she would have received in a bed.

He said: "We have had a very busy few days with emergency admissions running more than 20 per cent higher than normal.

"Beds are allocated according to need and we have had to admit some very ill and injured people."

He said that during that weekend 99 emergencies were admitted, compared to an average of 83.

In the last two weeks more than 835 emergencies had been admitted he said.

"This number of emergency admissions has meant we activated our escalation policy using the day surgery unit and beds in the high dependency unit for patients coming through A and E," he said.

"We have also had extra beds on wards and have been running to full capacity. It is our policy not to turn patients away. We believe if a patient needs our care they should be admitted."

The hospital has 613 beds, with a further 29 extra, or "trolley" beds, which are classed as moveable beds. There are just two actual trolleys used in the hospital.

Having spent almost six days on a hospital trolley, broken by her weekend at home, Mrs Rogers has beaten the record for the number of hours spent on a trolley held by diabetic Tony Collins, of Calne. Mr Collins spent 77-and-a-half hours on a trolley at Princess Margaret Hospital in February 2001. He then spent 60 hours on a trolley at Great Western Hospital in January 2003.

Alex Emery