Critical incident expected to last several weeks at Staffordshire's hospitals

One of the top bosses at the NHS trust which runs the Royal Stoke and Stafford's County Hospital expects the critical incident status to remain for a number of weeks.

University Hospitals North Midlands Trust declared it last Friday 30th December after what it calls "extremely high demand for all services".

Speaking to Greatest Hits Radio News, Dr Matthew Lewis, UHNM Medical Director, said:

"A couple of occasions before we've needed to go into a critical incident and usually they last for a short period of time, such as a couple of days or a weekend, but we've got almost as many flu patients as we have COVID patients.

“We have been under severe and sustained pressure over the Christmas period and until we have the opportunity to treat and discharge some of the patients in our bed base, and until we see a reduction in COVID and flu numbers it's difficult to see how we're going to come out of this quickly. It's going to be several weeks at least until we are in a position that we are more comfortable."

“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 people can get treatment quickly and to identify and utilise any additional capacity to allow us to discharge patients and free up our beds.

“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."

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