First-time parents Katie Bowers and Stefan Wyatt, both 33, knew they were due to welcome their baby on a special day this festive season, as Katie was due on New Year’s Day.

Our early careers team received a gold standard from NHS England for its fantastic Work Experience and Early Careers Activities programme.

We’re delighted our work to improve our A&Es and reduce waiting times has been endorsed by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) who have raised the ratings for urgent and emergency care at Queen’s Hospital and King George Hospital (KGH) from inadequate to requires improvement.

Junior doctors are on strike from 7am on Wednesday 20 December to 7am on Saturday 23 December.

Patients with suspected bladder cancer are now able to have biopsies taken and tumours removed much quicker as an outpatient – reducing the need for them to come back in for surgery.

Throughout this year our teams have been working hard to reduce waits our patient face in our A&Es. Their efforts are paying off as national statistics released on Thursday 14 December by NHS England show our Trust has improved its emergency care performance most in England.

Nurse Shaida Ghazala Akhtar, who retired from our Trust after 40 years in 2022, was among those invited to a special reception at Buckingham Palace to honour international nurses and midwives.

We’re proud our Trust has been awarded Disability Confident Leader status – the highest possible level in the government scheme which aims to make employers more inclusive of people with disabilities.

We were pleased to welcome Helen Whately, the Minister of State for Social Care, to King George Hospital this week where she recognised the ‘amazing work going on’ in A&E and our frailty ward which reflects the improvements in our performance.

We’re wishing our Jewish staff and local Jewish community a happy Chanukah, as the ‘festival of lights’ gets underway this evening.