Critical incident declared at two Staffordshire hospitals
The Royal Stoke and County Hospital Stafford say demand remains high
Last updated 30th Dec 2022
Bosses at the Royal Stoke and County Hospital in Stafford say they continue to be very busy heading into the New Year.
It’s as the University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS trust declares a critical incident because of the high demand for their services.
Dr Matthew Lewis, UHNM Medical Director, said: “We are currently experiencing extremely high demand for all our services. Both Royal Stoke University Hospital and County Hospital in Stafford have been under severe and sustained pressure over the Christmas period and this challenging situation is likely to continue into the New Year bank holiday period.
“We have therefore have taken the decision to declare a critical incident. This allows us to be able to take additional steps 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 and free up our beds.
“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 with those patients arriving waiting in a queue to be seen.
“During this time the emergency departments will continue to see the sickest patients first, which will lead to long waits for longer than 12 hours for some patients.
“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 their public for their understanding and co-operation.”