{"id":245744,"date":"2025-11-05T18:06:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T18:06:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/245744\/"},"modified":"2025-11-05T18:06:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T18:06:12","slug":"critical-incident-at-nottingham-hospitals-concerning-but-not-surprising","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/245744\/","title":{"rendered":"Critical incident at Nottingham hospitals ‘concerning but not surprising’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The trust said issues with new technology it had introduced has contributed to the mounting pressures\"NUHNUH runs Nottingham City Hospital (pictured) and Queen’s Medical Centre(Image: Nottingham Post )<\/p>\n

Health campaigners and unions are deeply concerned after the NHS<\/a> trust that runs the Queen’s Medical Centre<\/a> (QMC<\/a>) and City Hospital declared a critical incident – but they are “not surprised” at the move.<\/p>\n

Nottingham University Hospitals<\/a> (NUH<\/a>) made the announcement after a constant demand for its services and staffing challenges resulted in patients facing “significant waits” in A&E and other wards.<\/p>\n

The emergency department at Queen’s Medical Centre<\/a> is particularly feeling the mounting pressures, with the trust admitting 24 ambulances were being forced to wait outside with patients as of 4pm on Tuesday (November 4) – the time the incident was called<\/a>.<\/p>\n

NUH said issues with the rollout of a new electronic patient record, which it introduced over the weekend, have contributed to the mounting pressures.<\/p>\n

In a statement sent to Nottinghamshire Live on November 5, the trust said it had planned a “period of downtime” over the weekend to introduce the new technology.<\/p>\n

Yet on Monday, the electronic patient record performed “slower than expected” and – with the other ongoing pressures – triggered the trust to declare a critical incident.<\/p>\n

NUH has now urged the public and patients to carefully consider whether or not they need to attend A&E to help ease the mounting pressures.<\/p>\n

Reacting to the trust’s move, the Nottingham Keep Our NHS Public campaign group say they are “concerned but not surprised”.<\/p>\n

“Everyone wants the Trust to be operating effectively and for patients not to have to wait in ambulances to be admitted,” the group’s chair, Mike Scott, said.<\/p>\n

“We understand that part of the reason is down to tech issues, but overcrowding and lack of capacity in A&E is due to the failure of the government to properly fund our NHS \u2013 the Trust has been instructed to make over \u00a393 million in cuts in this financial year.<\/p>\n

\"AmbulancesAmbulances were spotted waiting outside the Queen’s Medical Centre on Tuesday (October 28) evening(Image: Submitted)<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s just not possible to get better services for less money. We call on our local MPs to meet with minister Wes Streeting to demand that the money is there to fund the health services we all rely on. Rachel Reeves must not try to balance her books by leaving the NHS short.”<\/p>\n

Unison, which represents thousands of workers at the trust, says Tuesday’s announcement “shows just how severe the pressures have become across Nottingham’s hospitals”.<\/p>\n

The trade union’s head of health in the East Midlands<\/a>, Gareth Eales, said: “Frontline NHS staff are going above and beyond to keep services running and to provide the best possible care to patients, despite the overwhelming demand and the extra challenges caused by the new IT system.<\/p>\n

“None of this is the fault of staff, they\u2019re doing their best in impossible conditions. What\u2019s needed now is real investment and support to help the workforce recover and ensure patients get the care they deserve.”<\/p>\n

NUH is one of the busiest NHS trusts in the country, with a budget of \u00a31.9bn and more than 19,000 members of staff.<\/p>\n

In recent years, the trust has been at the centre of the national maternity failings scandal and is currently the subject of the biggest maternity review in the history of the national health service.<\/p>\n

A critical incident is declared when an organisation can no longer deliver its services to the usual standard, often due to demand far outweighing capacity.<\/p>\n

The last time NUH declared a critical incident was in September 2024, when an IT failure in the Pathology department meant patients with blood testing appointments at City and QMC were asked not to attend.<\/p>\n

It is not known how long the current critical condition will be in place for, but it was still underway as of Wednesday afternoon (November 5). Referencing the failings in the rollout of new technology, the trust said it is working to “resolve the performance issues as quickly as possible”.<\/p>\n

Andy Callow, the trust’s chief digital and transformation information officer<\/a>, said: “Following the systems return online on Monday, we experienced slower than expected performance.<\/p>\n

“This, combined with sustained operational pressures across the Trust – particularly within our Emergency Department – led us to declare a critical incident to help maintain patient safety.<\/p>\n

“We are working closely with our partners at Nervecentre to resolve the performance issues as quickly as possible and to support the safe stand-down of the critical incident.<\/p>\n

“We are very grateful for the continued hard work of our colleagues to manage the ongoing Incident and for the public for their patience and for choosing the most appropriate NHS service”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The trust said issues with new technology it had introduced has contributed to the mounting pressuresNUH runs Nottingham…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245745,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,104,83873,100141,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-245744","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-nhs","11":"tag-nottingham-university-hospitals","12":"tag-queens-medical-centre","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245744\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}