Second Nottinghamshire NHS Trust declares critical incident after 'pressures like never before'

A critical incident has been declared at two Nottinghamshire NHS trusts as patients face "significant and unacceptable delays".

Nottingham University Hospitals (NUH) said it is facing "severe and sustained pressure" on its services, with rising demand, winter infections and staff sickness blamed for delays in its emergency departments and wards.

Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said in a statement on Facebook it had also declared a critical incident because it was seeing "insufficient discharges to meet the demand of patients waiting to be admitted".

NUH said it is regularly seeing more than 500 patients a day at the Queen's Medical Centre (QMC) emergency department, which is designed to treat 350 patients a day.

The busiest day of the year so far was January 7, where 550 patients attended the emergency department, NUH said.

Staff are working under extreme pressure, patients are facing lengthy waits in hospital corridors and demand for hospital beds has exceeded all the Trust's modelling since Christmas, it added.

Andrew Hall, chief operating officer at NUH, said: "We are experiencing pressures like never before.

"Despite our teams working tirelessly, the demand on our hospitals far exceeds our capacity.

"Declaring a critical incident is not a decision we have taken lightly, but it is necessary to protect patient safety.

"I 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."

The trust will now rearrange some elective procedures to create capacity for sick patients, will open all available beds and spaces, redeploy staff to help ease pressure, stop non-essential meetings and work with partners to speed up discharges.

Dr Manjeet Shehmar, medical director at NUH, said: "Our 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.

"We 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.

"When we're discharging patients, we ask that their friends or loved ones pick them up from hospital as soon as possible and have everything they need at home.

"If you have a planned appointment, please continue to attend unless you hear from us."

Both trusts have urged people to consider whether they can visit a pharmacy, their GP or urgent treatment centre instead of A&E, and asked that those who are collecting relatives from hospital upon discharge do so as quickly as possible to free up bed space.

In its statement, Sherwood Forest Hospitals said: "We sincerely apologise for the impact this is having.

"Despite the best efforts of our colleagues, we realise patient experience is not what we would want it to be.

"We continue to ask everyone to treat our staff with kindness and respect as they continue to work to provide patients with the care they deserve and need.

"We thank you for your ongoing support."

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