{"id":371706,"date":"2026-01-15T17:06:18","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T17:06:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/371706\/"},"modified":"2026-01-15T17:06:18","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T17:06:18","slug":"nhs-trusts-declare-critical-incidents-over-high-demand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/371706\/","title":{"rendered":"NHS trusts declare critical incidents over high demand"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Dr Charlotte Canniff, joint chief medical officer of NHS Surrey Heartlands, said declaring a critical incident allowed trusts to take additional steps to maintain safe services for patients and &#8220;help us cope with the growing pressures&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Unfortunately, this means local organisations may need to reschedule some non-urgent operations, treatments and outpatient appointments to accommodate those patients with the most urgent clinical need,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;People should attend appointments unless they are contacted; cancer and our other most urgent operations continue to be prioritised.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In Kent, the trust said its hospitals were experiencing &#8220;exceptionally high demand, driven by a continued high admission rate and a large number of patients with winter illnesses and respiratory viruses&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Beds across our hospitals are currently full and attendance at our emergency departments is extremely high, meaning there is very limited capacity to admit further patients who need acute care,&#8221; it added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Attending our emergency departments for non-life-threatening conditions will result in an extremely long wait. If you need medical assistance, please consider using alternative services.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dr Charlotte Canniff, joint chief medical officer of NHS Surrey Heartlands, said declaring a critical incident allowed trusts&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-371706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371706","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=371706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}