Quality and safety
Resident doctor strike
From Wednesday 17 to Monday 22 December, resident doctors (formerly known as junior doctors) will be taking strike action. During this time, our services will be under increased pressure.
Getting the right care
Please help us make sure emergency care is available for those who need it most:
- Only attend A&E in life-threatening emergencies.
- For non-urgent issues, please contact your GP, your local pharmacy, or NHS 111 (online or by phone).
Appointments and planned care
- If your appointment is affected, we will contact you directly.
- If you do not hear from us, please attend your appointment as planned.
How we keep you safe
We work hard to give you high quality care and patient safety is a huge part of making our services the best they can be.
To keep you safe, we have to make sure we have enough nurses and midwives for the types of patients we have on our wards.
Information about our staffing levels can be found on display in our wards, which includes planned and actual staffing available at the start of every shift.
Our improvement plan shows how we are bringing more nurses and midwifes onto our wards. However, there are times when we do not have the nursing levels we would like so we use bank and agency staff to supplement our staffing ratios.
If you would like to read more about how we’re keeping you safe, you can:
- read our patient safety memos
- visit our performance page
- find out about our Accident and Emergency quality indicators
- view information about our safe staffing levels
- read our Patient Safety Incident Response Framework Policy
- read our Patient Safety Plan
Watch NHS England's video on simple steps to keep you safe during your hospital stay: