Critical incident declared at Nottingham hospitals

A critical incident has been declared at Nottingham's hospitals in response to "extreme pressures" across all services.

Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (NUH) said some patients waited about 36 hours in emergency departments on Monday.

A critical incident remains in place on Tuesday, the trust said.

A senior doctor said it was an "inevitability" that pressures would worsen in winter.

Dr Tasso Gazis, divisional director of medicine at the trust, which runs the Queen's Medical Centre and Nottingham City Hospital, said backlogs were caused by patients who were ready to be moved out of the emergency departments being forced to wait for beds to become free.

Patients were placed on trollies in corridors, with about 70 waiting to be moved to other wards at the busiest times on Monday, he added.

"I can only apologise. That is really not the care that a hospital like this wishes to provide or my colleagues wish to provide," he said.

"My colleagues will have done their very best to make sure personal and medical needs are met, but this isn't a way that we would like to be treating people, and I would like to apologise to people waiting an inordinate amount of time for a bed."

He said people should still call 999 in an emergency and patients with appointments should still visit the hospitals, but asked people with non-urgent conditions to seek care elsewhere.

The senior doctor also said the trust had brought in some winter measures earlier than usual to help mitigate the "inevitable" increase in pressure on the hospitals as temperatures fall.

In addition, a hospital spokesperson said an IT system issue on Tuesday, which has now been resolved, "may have caused delays" to patient care.

"During this time we reverted to our standard offline processes and acknowledge that there may have been delays as a result of working in this way and we apologise for any inconvenience caused," they said.

"Patient safety is always our top priority and we would like to thank colleagues for their continued efforts and swift response to help rectify the problem."

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