William Harvey Hospital in Ashford - one of those affected

An internal major incident has been declared at all east Kent hospitals after an unprecedented level of patients has pushed staff to the limit.

A review of all hospitals in the East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust area is being carried out amid claims patient safety is being put at risk.

The official major incident declaration - normally called after huge motorway accidents or similar large incident - comes after the number of patients within hospital wards throughout the area has risen dramatically.

An internal statement issued to trust staff, which covers the William Harvey Hospital, QEQM in Margate and the Kent and Canterbury hospitals, said all consultants and their teams needed to review all patients.

They should discharge all that were safe to be discharged, the email said.

Peter Johnson, emergency planning and business continuity manager, said in the document: "A decision has been made to call an Internal Major Incident, as it has been considered that patient safety is being put at risk due to the amount of patients within our hospital."

He said the trust was working with partners, and colleagues in other trusts "to ensure that they support our efforts in discharging patients."

It comes just five days after extra beds were put in hospital wards because of a huge influx in patients.

More doctors and nurses were called in to cope with a surge in demand at the three hospitals, with patient numbers double what was normally expected.

An official statement released today by the trust said "East Kent Hospitals has initiated the use of internal major incident procedures to ensure the continuity of safe patient care in the face of an unprecedented number of very unwell people needing hospital care."

The QEQM hospital in Margate

Those procedures mean:

• doctors are asked to cancel any non-priority activities such as study leave or administrative tasks
• operational managers are asked to clear their diaries in order to support the doctor and nursing teams with any process issues
• the Trust is daily reviewing its outpatient clinics and, where appropriate, cancelling some of these
• If a clinic is cancelled, patients will be informed directly. Patients should assume their clinic is still being held unless they hear directly from the hospital
• outpatient staff will be redeployed, when they become available, to help with patient care in the hospital wards

The statement said all surgery was continuing as planned.

They said the move had been made following never-before-seen levels of exceptionally unwell people arriving at hospitals, particularly A&E.

People are being urged not to attend their local A&E department unless they are unwell.

Dr Neil Martin, medical director, said: “The Trust has taken this action in order to ensure that patients continue to be looked after well and safely despite the exceptional demands on the service”.

Have you been affected by the difficulties in east Kent's hospitals? Email us at multimediadesk@thekmgroup.co.uk