A critical incident has been declared at the NHS trust that runs Nottingham’s two main hospitals, with patients experiencing \u00ab\u00a0significant and unacceptable delays\u00a0\u00bb across services.<\/p>\n
Nottingham University Hospitals (NUH) NHS Trust said since Christmas, a rise in winter infections and staff sickness had led to \u00ab\u00a0severe and sustained pressure\u00a0\u00bb on its emergency department (ED) and across hospital wards.<\/p>\n
The trust said the ED at the Queen’s Medical Centre (QMC) was designed to treat 350 patients a day, but the site was \u00ab\u00a0regularly\u00a0\u00bb seeing more than 500 patients.<\/p>\n
When declaring the critical incident on Tuesday, hospital officials pleaded with people to only attend the ED in an emergency.<\/p>\n
NUH said the demand on its hospital beds had \u00ab\u00a0exceeded all of our forecasted modelling\u00a0\u00bb, with patients having \u00ab\u00a0unacceptable and lengthy waits on corridors\u00a0\u00bb.<\/p>\n
Andrew Hall, chief operating officer at NUH, said: \u00ab\u00a0We are experiencing pressures like never before.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0Despite our teams working tirelessly, the demand on our hospitals far exceeds our capacity.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0Declaring a critical incident is not a decision we have taken lightly, but it is necessary to protect patient safety.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0I am deeply sorry for the poor experience this is causing and ask everyone to treat our staff with kindness as they work through this difficult period to deliver the quality of care that you expect.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n
As a result of declaring the critical incident, the trust will now rearrange some elective procedures to create capacity for the sickest patients.<\/p>\n
All available beds and spaces will be opened and some staff will be redeployed to help alleviate pressures.<\/p>\n
They will also be working with NHS and local partners to speed up discharges and provide community support.<\/p>\n
Dr Manjeet Shehmar, medical director at NUH, said: \u00ab\u00a0Our teams in our emergency department will continue to see the sickest patients first, which means that if you attend our ED at QMC for conditions that are not an emergency, then you will have an extremely long wait and may be redirected to use other services instead.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0We continue to ask the public to help us by only using ED in an emergency or serious accidents. For all other issues please ensure you have called 111 beforehand to be directed to the most appropriate service.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n
Patients who have planned appointments are advised to continue to attend unless they are told otherwise.<\/p>\n
East Midlands Ambulance Service also said its emergency service was \u00ab\u00a0extremely busy\u00a0\u00bb on Tuesday and urged people to only call 999 for life-threatening emergencies.<\/p>\n
Follow BBC Nottingham on Facebook, on X, or on Instagram. Send your story ideas to eastmidsnews@bbc.co.uk or via WhatsApp on 0808 100 2210.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A critical incident has been declared at the NHS trust that runs Nottingham’s two main hospitals, with patients experiencing \u00ab\u00a0significant and unacceptable delays\u00a0\u00bb across services. Nottingham University Hospitals (NUH) NHS Trust said since Christmas, a rise in winter infections and staff sickness had led to \u00ab\u00a0severe and sustained pressure\u00a0\u00bb on its emergency department (ED) and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9645","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9645\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}