Trust declares Critical Incident and announces measures to protect patient safety

We are currently running at extremely high levels of occupancy and seeing a significant rise in demands for our services.

Attendances at our Emergency Department are rising and there are ongoing challenges in discharging patients who are well enough to leave hospital – all of which leads to longer waits than we would like for patients to be seen and admitted.

Patient safety is our top priority, and the Trust has taken the difficult decision to declare a critical incident which allows us to be able to take additional steps to maintain safe services for our patients.

What does this mean for patients?

• To accommodate those patients with the most urgent clinical need, it means some non-urgent operations and outpatient appointments need to be rescheduled
• Cancer and our other most urgent operations and appointments will continue to be prioritised.
• Those patients whose appointments need to be rescheduled are in the process of being contacted directly by our teams. If you are not contacted directly, please continue to turn up for your appointment
• Please contact the number on your appointment letter if you are no longer able to make your appointment so it can be reallocated to another patient.

We appreciate that this may be disappointing for those patients whose appointments need to be moved to another date, and we would like to apologise for any inconvenience because of this.

However, patient safety must take priority and we need to take action to make sure that those who are more clinically urgent get the help they need as quickly as possible.

What can you do to help us?

Our teams continue to work exceptionally hard; and we would like to reassure our patients and the public that in spite of the challenges faced and some changes to non-urgent appointments, essential services remain fully open for anyone who requires urgent medical help.

The public can help to reduce the pressures on our services by ensuring they only attend our ED for serious accidents and life-threatening emergencies. If you are unwell, please visit NHS 111 online, or call 111, for 24/7 advice about the most appropriate care for your needs.