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Due to “extreme pressures” on health services, NHS Nottingham and Nottinghamshire trusts have declared a critical incident across city and county hospitals.

Bosses said the city and county's hospitals were facing “extreme pressures” as hospitals and A&Es were full.

The Nottingham and Nottinghamshire NHS system has declared a critical incident to protect patient safety due to significant pressures on services and a reduction in staffing levels which means longer waits in A&E and for admission to our wards.

Dr Dave Briggs, medical director at NHS Nottingham and Nottinghamshire, said: “Please only attend the emergency department if it is vital, this means a life-threatening illness or injury that cannot be treated elsewhere, this allows us to treat those who need us the most.

Accident & Emergency department sign outside an NHS hospital in the UK by Stock/Adobe.

“There are things everyone can do to help, and we are asking people to use our services wisely and to think about self-care as an option for some conditions, such as coughs and colds, before automatically going to the NHS for help.

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“If self-care isn’t an option, then choosing the right service will help patients to get the right treatment first time and usually more quickly.

“One way the public can help us is by supporting our NHS teams to get your relatives home from hospital if they are medically fit to leave.

“We are grateful to everyone who has taken steps to help, and we would like to thank our incredible teams across the health and social care sector for their efforts in keeping the public safe.”

The critical incident was declared during one of the longest NHS strikes in history, as junior doctors are taking industrial action from 7am on January 3, to 7am on January 9 – as the British Medical Association said it was “forced to take action” and reject the government's December pay offer as it fails to compensate for real-terms pay cuts going as far back as 2008.

For more information on knowing where to go for medical care, head to notts.icb.nhs.uk/your-health/urgent-and-non-urgent-care/

Hospital staff have advised people to only call 999 or attend A&E if there is a life-threatening emergency.

Further advice was issued that urgent attendances will be redirected to other services for onward care and treatment.

'Critical incident' declared at NHS Nottingham and Nottinghamshire hospitals