Friday 19 Update – Winter Weather

Although we are beginning to see the winter weather improve, we remain in a yellow weather warning for snow and ice throughout today.

Our sites remain open and we’re continuing to strongly urge all patients to reschedule their appointments if they are not clinically necessary. If you can attend your appointment safely, and you feel it is urgent, please do so with extreme caution. To reschedule your appointment, please get in touch, if you know the department you are visiting, please call the department directly.

We do have significantly reduced staffing across all of the organisation due to the weather so if you are calling to reschedule appointments, please bear with us and we will get to you as soon as we can. Likewise, if you are visiting any of our sites today, we will have reduced staffing.

Our estates team have been busy ensuring the paths and carparks are cleared however we would like to remind everyone that as the snow thaws, please be careful of snow and ice falling from roofs and onto paths.

And finally, we’d like to say an enormous thank you to all our staff, partners and you, the community. Thank you to the Coastguard teams for not only transporting patients but transporting our staff to be able to care for patients across the county. Thank you to all of those staff who have not been home in days and instead, stayed close to the hospital to ensure our services could continue to operate. The offers of support we have seen from the community for accommodation has been overwhelming!

We know we’re not of the woods yet and as the weather turns to slush and possible ice, we’d continue to encourage you all to take great care if you are venturing out.

As a reminder, health advice can be sought from NHS Inform on, https://www.nhsinform.scot/ or by calling NHS24 on 111. In an emergency, please call 999.

And for our fantastic local community updates, you can follow the Orkney Islands Council Facebook page.