Monitoring more patients at home and focusing on the mental wellbeing of staff are among the ways in which the team running Nottingham's hospitals hope to get through a challenging winter. Health leaders at the Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (NUH) say that issues including rising cases of flu and upcoming strikes will make this winter more of a challenge than the pandemic.
But when Nottinghamshire Live visited the Queen's Medical Centre on Wednesday (December 7), senior staff said that many programmes were being worked on which could get the local NHS through this winter and beyond. One of the primary initiatives being worked on is 'virtual wards', where patients with certain conditions are monitored at home so that they can recover there instead of in hospital.
Heather Young is the Virtual Wards Programme Manager at NUH and says that the concept is good for patients, but also improves the flow of patients through hospitals. She said: "We're increasingly learning that patients don't want to be recovering in hospital.
