A 'SIGNIFICANT' number of patients are attending Dorset County Hospital's A & E when it is not the right point of access for their care.

The Dorchester hospital is currently operating at Level 2- which means 'the local health and social care system is starting to show signs of pressure'.

Although this means that the hospital isn't managing to meet current demand with the resources it has, it is faring better than all but one other hospital in the South West.

The Royal Cornwall Hospital, Bath's RUH, Bristol's BRI and Children's Hospital and Yeovil District Hospital have all declared the highest level of alert in the last week as they struggle to cope with a huge volume of extra patients.

But a spokesman for DCH said patients who do not need emergency care are still attending the Dorchester A&E, putting additional pressure on services.

"We had a significant number of patients attend with primary care-type conditions, such as chronic pain management or upper respiratory tract infections," they said. "These patients should seek support from primary care [GPs etc, which manage long-term conditions] in the first instance."

Patients across the country have been repeatedly warned to ensure they are accessing the right point of care.

One NHS spokesman said: "The emergency department is for serious and life-threatening injuries and conditions, but increasingly patients have been attending whose needs could be more appropriately met by primary care – either through their GP or their local pharmacy.

In the space of just 24 hours last week, an unprecedented 14 health trusts issued desperate messages on social media warning patients they were extremely busy.

Dozens of hospitals across the country are experiencing ‘major internal incidents.'

As reported in the Echo yesterday, the Red Cross said it had been drafted in to help the NHS, in what it labelled a 'humanitarian crisis.'

DCH has confirmed to the Echo that it has not required help from the charity.

Health secretary Jeremy Hunt criticised the Red Cross description of the situation and is expected to update MPs this evening.

Provisional data from the College of Emergency Medicine, which represents A&E doctors, shows that an average of 22 per cent of patients waited for four or more hours in the last week of December. This is twice as high as the same week in 2015, when 11 per cent experienced delays that long.