Agency staff are costing Dorset County Hospital £500,000 a month – but even with their help many surgery cases are being cancelled, sometimes on the day.

Chief executive Patricia Miller says that the hospital is enduring ‘unprecedented’ demand in its emergency department which is having a knock on effect on other areas with a shortage of beds now common.

She told a board of governors meeting on Monday that the level of emergency admissions have seldom dropped since the traditional peak in the winter, putting staff under constant pressure and leaving them tired and stressed.

The biggest increases have been in children under four and adults over 65 with a bigger than expected demand overall from Weymouth and Portland and West Dorset.

Extra support is being offered to staff through welfare programmes with the hospital looking to boost morale by making improvements to rest room areas and offering yoga sessions.

Chair of governors Mark Addison told the meeting that the situation was “a huge worry” as the hospital was preparing for another busy winter.

“The whole hospital has been under huge pressure since last winter, there has hardly been a let up. It’s been a huge worry not only for patient care but also for our staff,” he said.

The chief executive admitted that spending on agency staff was now exceeding the growth levels anticipated in the budget but said that he concerns were not wholly financial: “My biggest concern is for staff resilience because they’re tired,” she told the governors.

She said that bed spaces were now often to be counted in negative numbers, with a shortage of 15 beds now considered to be a relatively low amount: “there are now no mode beds to open unless we stop doing day surgery, and we don’t want to do that,” she said.

She said that the inevitable consequence was a growth in waiting lists for elective surgery and said that already many operations were being cancelled on the day, or the day before, because of the need for emergency cases.

Another area, which she said had far exceeded the contracted amount, was ophthalmology where extra investment needed to be found to get the number of those waiting back to an acceptable level.