A Critical Incident has been declared at St Mary’s Hospital today (Tuesday) as the Isle of Wight NHS Trust takes steps to protect patient safety.
The Trust is responding to a high number of people needing urgent and emergency care and challenges discharging people from hospital – bedblockers.
St Mary’s Hospital is full and the Emergency Department is only able to treat people with life-threatening conditions and injuries.
In order to maintain the safety of services, some planned surgical activity has been postponed, but the hospital will continue to prioritise cancer treatment and urgent operations, as well as people who have already had long waits for their treatment. Some outpatient appointments may also be affected.
Steve Parker, Medical Director, has said:
“The situation is serious but we are taking urgent steps to ensure the safety of our services.
“We must improve the flow of patients through the hospital and we are appealing to our local community to help by making sure loved ones are collected from hospital when they are ready to leave. This will to free up beds for those who need them.
“Only come to the Emergency Department (ED) for life threatening conditions and injuries. We urge you not to attend the ED unless it’s an emergency: NHS 111 online can help you find where to get help and support.
Article continues below this advertisement “Please have a COVID vaccination if you are offered one. Vaccination will protect not only yourself but others around you. We are seeing a rise in COVID cases on the Island and the number of people in our hospital with COVID is increasing rapidly to levels beyond what we saw during the pandemic.
Members of the public are being asked to 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 alternatively contact your local pharmacist or GP.
- Think about the most appropriate NHS service for your needs and to only call 999 in the event of a life-threatening illness or injury.
- Stay away from our hospitals if you have symptoms, or are a contact of someone who has tested positive for COVID-19.
As this is the second ‘Critical Incident’ in only three weeks, doesn’t this flag something up for the managers/those running the hospital?
You can’t blame people for getting ill, and calling people ‘bedblockers’ is very derogatory – I’m pretty sure all of them would rather be someplace else rather than sitting in a hospital bed. Surely it’s down to those running the hospital (not the doctors, nurses etc) to ensure that this would only happen very rarely? Twice within three weeks does tend to suggest poor management.
Get a grip, open your eyes population is getting bigger……….
The hospital is not .
It’s part of the governments austerity programme for saving money by not allowing any NHS treatment via GP, dentist and hospital appointments, that will save them a few Bob!
the only sane reply too this as far as a&e goes is…..HAVE A WORD WITH ALL OUR LAZY HIDE N SEEK BUT STILL GETTING FULL PAY DOCTORS!!
and no beds….re enstate all those that have been taken away! govs got money when its suits them just not on things for us minions
Where have all the GPs gone???.and why do we only have one hospital with a growing population on the island?..
Retired or left the profession because of working conditions or gone back to their own countries because of Brexit and the general xenophobic nastiness that the whole Brexit campaign engendered.
Rubbish. Don’t forget that nobody actually voted to join the EU in the first place.
Why don’t you anti democratic winging lefty idiots stop moaning?..you never shut up, we voted to leave, so Shut-up…You Lost!!!.
Given the current situation, and the increase of COVID cases once again surely it would make sense to urgently make face covering a requirement at the hospital once again.
What for? Face masks do not help in any way whatsoever. Just a government stunt to keep people like yourself terrified so that they can control you. At one one thousandth of a millimetre, the virus particles will pass straight through a face mask.
The virus particles are transported by respiratory droplets (they don’t just float around by themselves) which are orders of magnitude larger and are caught very efficiently by the masks. I’m not advocating for return to being masked everywhere but in the most densely packed areas masks would absolutely cut down transmission by somewhere in the neighbourhood of 70-80% or more if the masks are worn properly and at least the quality of the surgical masks. In an A&E situation where the most vulnerable are it would make sense at some point. If the few medical professionals we have left are off sick the issue only gets worse.
That is absolute rubbish. The virus is known to be airborne, the water droplets theory has long since been discredited. Why do you think they tell you to keep windows open to let the virus out? If you think a mask will help you, carry on with one, but you will just be fooling yourself.
Another village idiot. Which village do you represent ?
Not only at the hospital, in shops, including supermarkets and on public transport.
Southampton General have already made masks mandatory. Good move on their part.
This Government won’t bother. She’s too busy wrecking the economy and destroying our pension pots!
Please shut up! People like you are obsessed with those useless things.
You do not need a government official to tell you to wear a mask, that is individuals choice – so we should all start thinking for ourselves – I have started wearing one, even if I am the only person in the shop with one, doesn’t bother me. Start thinking and doing for yourselves as you can be sure Truss won’t give a toss.
Why don’t you wear one, & let the rest of us rational people decide for ourselves!
The Council will help out by building more and more houses.
And the Government by doing nothing to prevent hundreds of thousands from filling our land and adding to our woes in so very many ways.
The Q.A hospital in Portsmouth have also declared a critical incident,
and it’s not even winter yet.
The UK should be like other countries when you are well enough to leave hospital you leave no ifs or buts you go no bed blocking
I have just had my second knee operation on the same knee, one that went wrong and they put you through stringent tests and baths for a week beforehand, nose tests, making sure you have had covid jabs (4th) etc, and make sure you come out as soon as you can.
Unfortunelety the hospital’s so called management has called wolf once too often, no one believes you anymore, you lack credability, if you all resigned on mass from your lucrative positions no one would notice, the doctors would still treat and the nursing staff would still care, which is all we ask from the NHS.
This is getting tiresome. The stench from the trusts offices is getting stronger and stronger. Where is kiss ass Seely at times like this. One bloody hospital on the Isle of Wight is a bloody disgrace. I feel so sorry for the nurses who do a magnificent job. Sod the house building – get a bloody grip on things and concentrate on the nhs shortcomings here.
Take note Isle of wight councillors. Our one and only hospital is really struggling. Social care is practically non existent. No more buildings homes for mainland buyers, only build for homeless island residents. No more second homes!
We used to have four hospitals on the Island, one each in Ryde, Shanklin and East Cowes until some ‘clever’ person decided it was best to put all their eggs in one basket! Downhill ever since! One is still unoccupied and standing, so wouldn’t take much to re-open.
I am certain it has been mentioned before and I’m sure it is in everyone’s mind, but with the increased population that will inevitably happen with all the additional housing on the island how will St Mary’s cope if the hospital can barely manage now?
Has there ever been a more uselessly administrated hospital????
It’s only going to get worse with all these new housing estates popping up everywhere,we need to build a bigger hospital or building a new bigger hospital instead of estate or new supermarkets that we don’t need
The problem isn’t the building, it is the staff. They can’t even get enough staff for the current hospital, let alone another one.
This is what 12 years of Tory cuts and “efficiency improvements” have got us. An NHS workforce that are utterly disillusioned, sick of their jobs, and leaving as soon as they retire. NHS nurses can retire at 55, and they are doing so in droves. Take that in for a moment, they are retiring 10 years before they have to and accepting a reduced pension just to get away from a job they used to love, but now hate.
St Mary’s is a joke.
I don’t know what is more unreliable the Floating Bridge or
St Mary’s.
Meanwhile an empty prison sits idle over the road!! Could this not be used for a respite centre to take the pressure off? I mean the islands population is increasing and not getting any younger and how about a few dentists to go there as well as many people i know cant get in anywhere!!..What a mess!!
Aside from the fact that it is a prison and entirely unsuitable, let us suppose, for a moment, that you spent the £million or so it would take to renovate.
Where would you find the staff to run it?
In 2022 this is not good and only adds more stress to staff and families concerned!!
Totally agree tim in both comments,seems the council rather get housing estates and sit back and blame nhs
It’s amazing that voters haven’t connected cause and effect over the past 12 years or so. Nurse’s bursary- cancelled, Support for junior doctors – ignored. You get what you vote for.
Absolutely. 100% this.
We are 12 years into a Tory Government and the country is on its knees. What will it take to make these people realise that what they read as “news” in rags like the Express, Mail and Sun is just Tory propaganda and lies?
Whilst everyone is bleeting on (rightly so) about how we only have one hospital, that will not change any time soon. We can barely staff St Mary’s, therefore would be unable to staff another hospital if it ever got the green light to be built. The NHS is in absolute turmoil at the moment, several professions are voting in a ballot to strike because they’re not recognised for their skill, knowledge and time. Wages (as are all at this point) are not in line with inflation. Nurses are expected to work overtime in sub-optimal conditions, expected to treat patients in corridors, or take on more patients than is safe for their individual workload. That is not safe.
Perhaps if we had hung on to the little cottage hospitals patients could have been transferred there and freed up beds in the main Hospital. With the growing population on the Island one hospital is not enough and sending patients to the mainland is not the answer with all the crossings being disrupted at one time or another due to covid and staff shortages getting there can be a nightmare especially for cancer patients.
As I said above! Ok I have a BSc, but it doesn’t take much intelligence to see what Tully and I have said
A BSc in what?
Certainly not anything medical.
Maybe if the care staff hadn’t been let go over the jibby-jab there would be care staff to look after the ‘bed blockers’. Just a thougt
QA Portsmouth is also on Critical, heaven help us when they go on strike. Truss needs to sit up and notice, but there again I do wonder if she is still aiming to kill of the NHS, like her predecessor. Start wearing face masks again – unless you want a repeat of Covid, which does leave long lasting side effects if you haven’t been reading the news.
So does the ‘Flu, which has been dealt with for years! Without masks, imagine this – Masks containing the virus, and stopping the spread – therefore you are breathing it in over and over, just as well they don’t work