A&E wait times reduced by 'Dragon's Den' idea

About £12,600 has been spent on the Fit2Sit scheme

Waiting times in accident and emergency at Sutton-in-Ashfield's King's Mill Hospital have been reduced by moving some less seriously ill people to chairs instead of trolleys.

Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust's executive board met on Thursday to discuss the effectiveness of a plan called Fit2Sit, which was introduced in January to tackle overcrowding and improve the flow of patients.

It involves medics identifying which patients need assessment but do not need to be lying down on a trolley while they wait, with a separate room set aside to hold 19 patients.

Julia Rose, lead nurse at King's Mill's A&E, said the staff-suggested idea had "dramatically reduced" overcrowding.

The Local Democracy Reporting Service said the meeting was told the waiting time for non-admitted patients to be seen in A&E had dropped by about 40 minutes since the change – down from 196 minutes to 150 minutes.

Meanwhile the average number of patients within the department's majors area, where patients need more intensive treatment, has dropped from 61 to 35.

A total of  89% of patients are now offloaded by ambulance crews within 30 minutes of arrival, compared to 80% in December 2024.

'Suggested by staff'

Richard Kemp, divisional director of nursing for urgent and emergency care at the trust, told the board: "We can keep our clinicians in consulting rooms [and] keep patients due an assessment in a private area.

"If necessary with ongoing investigation, a patient can return to the waiting room while that happens, whereas all of those patients would have been in the majors space previously, contributing to the crowding in that area."

About £12,600 was spent on Fit2Sit from money raised by the trust's Daffodil Volunteers fund, including £5,000 awarded from a "Dragon's Den" initiative, which involves hospital staff pitching their own ideas to managers about how to solve problems.

Board chairman Graham Ward said: "The biggest positive is this came from our staff, their idea, their approach to how we can improve our patient experience."