Royal Stoke critical incident declared due to 'extreme pressure'
Bosses at Stoke-on-Trent's main hospital have declared the second critical incident of the year. The announcement – which covers both Royal Stoke University Hospital and Stafford's County Hospital – comes as the University Hospitals of North Midlands (UHNM) trust has been under increasing pressure.
Patients have been warned of even longer delays than usual at the Royal Stoke as efforts were being stepped up to discharge people to ease bed-blocking.
Katy Thorpe, UHNM chief operating officer, said: “We have seen even greater demands on our services in the last 24 hours and we are currently under extreme pressure.
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“We have therefore taken the decision to declare a critical incident. This helps us to take additional measures to maintain safe services for our patients.
“We will always do our best for patients and keep patients safe and locally we are working with our NHS and local authority partners to put in place measures to ensure that people who need hospital and emergency care can get treatment quickly and to identify and utilise any additional capacity to allow us to discharge patients that do not require hospital care.
“As anticipated, the pressure is greatest in our emergency departments, who are facing on-going challenges as patients are unable to be admitted to beds promptly. During this time the emergency departments will continue to see the sickest patients first, which means for some patients there may be much longer delays for their treatment.
“We continue to ask the public to help us by only using A&E in a serious or life threatening emergency and for their help when we’re discharging their friends or loved ones to ensure they’re picked up from hospital as soon as possible and have everything they need at home.
“I would like to thank our staff for their on-going efforts during this extremely challenging period and the public for their understanding and co-operation.”
A total of eight critical incidents were declared by UHNM last year.
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