NHS bosses across Nottinghamshire have asked the public to help ahead of the New Year's weekend as the healthcare system continues to face sustained pressures. Both Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (NUH) - which runs the Queen's Medical Centre and Nottingham City Hospital - and Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs King’s Mill, Newark and Mansfield Community Hospital, declared an internal 'critical incident' on Thursday (December 29).
It comes a week after NUH declared an internal 'critical incident' amid the pressures on the Emergency Department (ED), with some operations delayed. The alert was subsequently expanded across the wider Nottinghamshire NHS - the second system-wide critical incident since July.
Officials at NUH said on Thursday they were facing a large number of people arriving at ED who needed to be admitted to hospital suffering with respiratory conditions, including flu. Now the NHS Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Integrated Care Board - a partnership between the county’s NHS and care organisations - have urged the public to use services wisely in the run-up to another busy period.
