An emergency-room doctor at an unidentified Thai hospital says the department has been overwhelmed by patient numbers for the past two to three months.

Even with more than 10 doctors on the morning shift, staff cannot examine patients quickly enough, the doctor said in a Facebook post accompanied by photographs showing patients on trolleys and queues extending outside the department.

Heavy staffing still falls short

The post listed more than 10 doctors on the morning shift, eight on the afternoon shift and four overnight. The doctor said this was a heavier rota than almost any other hospital operated.

Despite those numbers, the afternoon team sometimes does not get to eat until 11pm. Patient numbers only begin to fall at around 4am for the overnight team, while new arrivals continue throughout the night.

The doctor asked whether other hospitals were experiencing the same rise in demand, and how emergency departments staffed by only one or two doctors per shift managed to see all their patients.

The doctor and hospital were not identified. The name shown in the Facebook screenshot was blurred.

Referrals add to pressure

In addition to walk-in patients, the department receives referrals from across Thailand, according to the post.

Staff deal daily with cases involving methamphetamine, cannabis and kratom, as well as a large number of psychiatric patients. Accident cases are also high, the doctor said, placing the hospital on a level with any other in terms of workload.

Commenters responded with support for the doctor and the wider emergency team, with several urging staff to make sure they ate.

For foreigners living in or visiting Thailand, the post is a reminder that waits at a busy state-hospital emergency department may be lengthy, particularly where patients arrive without life-threatening conditions.

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20 August 2026

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I'd suggest that Thailand is not alone when it comes to overworked medical staff.

But, 10 doctors on a morning ER shift would be considered lavish staffing in the West. Despite this, the claim is that queues still spill into corridors.

Surely, that tells you the problem isn’t the number of doctors. Rather, it’s the flood of walk‑ins and referrals treating the ER as a catch‑all clinic.

In Australia or the UK, nurse triage and GP gatekeeping filter out half these cases before they ever reach a doctor. Here, the system instead throws sheer manpower at the front door, and still drowns.

As I see it, the bottleneck isn’t a shortage of staff, it’s actually the design, where the ER is treated as the universal intake point for everything from minor ailments to complex trauma, leaving even heavy staffing unable to keep pace.

6 minutes ago, Jim Waldron said:

But, 10 doctors on a morning ER shift would be considered lavish staffing in the West. Despite this, the claim is that queues still spill into corridors

I went to emergency last week in canada. 1 doctor in the whole emergency department. Took me over 9 hours just to get in to see her.

She was taking care of approx 40 patients at the time.