Isle of Wight NHS Trust remains under significant pressure despite calling an end to a critical incident caused by high levels of demand for emergency care.
The hospital is still extremely busy and continuing to face ongoing challenges with discharging people who are ready to go home or into social care settings.
Acting Chief Executive, Dr Nikki Turner, said:
“With the support of our teams, who are working tirelessly and the support of the people of the Island, we have been able to relieve some of the pressure that we were facing this time yesterday.
We are still seeing a very high demand for our services and would encourage people to visit NHS 111 online to find out the best places get help and support. For life threatening emergencies and injuries people should still call 999.”
Members of the public can help by:
- Collecting family and friends from hospital as soon as they are ready to be discharged, to free up beds for those who need them.
- Visit NHS 111 online or call NHS 111 for heath advice, or contacting their local pharmacist or GP.
- Only calling 999 in the event of a life-threatening illness or injury.
Does anyone know why there’s such a high level of demand at the moment given it’s (only) September? Or is it a combination of factors including staff absences?
ie maybe dont keep posting scare news then its all back again! its the iow..were overpopulated for our one badly run hospital.itll never be any differrnt.forced jabs affected care sector and doctors are still MIA .not news worthy just some thing that needs too change 100%
Island Echo has the need to supply information/news of interest and aid to the population of the Island.
Such a story/news as this needs to be reported, to be complacent and accept that this will always be the case helps no one, whether poorly run or underfunded, the hospital like the NHS in general is currently on its knees. We are able to make our own minds up as individuals. The NHS is paid for through taxes that we pay for, we in a democracy have a right to know what is going on and a right to vote, complain or suffer in silence, only by receiving independent news information that is correct and updated factually can we make informed decisions.
Island Echo, TRUTH hurts some, please carry on.
Having worked in other acute hospitals on the mainland, no I don’t believe we are “overpopulated for our one …hospital”. The article does mention the need for non-urgent patients to phone 111 first so perhaps part of the problem is an education issue?
Rather than use this forum as a place to simply vent and throw around ill informed views, why don’t we all do what we can to be a tad more supportive of each other? I for one am eternally grateful to anyone who works in the public sector; most of whom work incredibly long hours for low pay only to read comments like yours and think “what’s the point?”.
It’s quite obvious why the demand is high. People have difficulty in accessing GPs so are using the 111 service and going to A&E instead, and one only has to look at the house building levels to realise that there are many more people requiring healthcare services than the present arrangements can possibly cope with. (Remember we once had five hospitals)
It will only get worse due to overcrowding & over building!
Crying wolf/attention seeking.
It might help if some people stopped using the hospital as a GP surgery. Seems some people go there with a sore toe or a pain in their backside!
Pre COVID, GPs were first line of defence for the hospital, filtering those that really needed hospital care from those that were just “poorly” and home treatment would suffice. 111 was there for more urgent, but not really serious needs. Now GPs are not doing their part it’s fallen to 111 to cope with first and second line of defence, result is that they are now overwhelmed, defence lines collapsed, hospital is now for some the first choice. Cottage hospitals and council care homes fulfilled the need in the past for discharged patients needing nursing care, sadly privatisation put paid to all this, and the need to cut costs. Get GPs back doing what they are paid to do might ease the problem a bit.
When I worked at St Mary’s Hospital, it was at Black Alert (full to capacity) nearly all year round from 2010. Unlike a few years before when it was only full in the Winter.