Patients have been told to expect longer wait times at the accident and emergency department at the island’s main hospital due to a lack of beds.

It comes after Noble’s experienced ‘major pressures’ at the start of the week which eventually led to the cancellation of Monday’s planned Southern 100 races.

The opening night of the road-racing event near Castletown was delayed and then eventually scrapped due to ‘capacity issues’ at the site.

Although pressures have eased at Noble’s since then, bed space for patients is still limited at the facility.

A spokesperson for Manx Care said staff were ‘working with the ward doctors and nurses to improve earlier discharges’ in a bid to tackle the problem.’

Some patients have and will also be transferred to the Martin Ward at Ramsey Cottage Hospital to ‘create capacity for those patients in [A&E] to be transferred to a bed more quickly’.

SOUTHERN 100

One rider remains in hospital following a crash at Ballakeighan, the first corner of the 4.25-mile circuit at the Southern 100 road races. The session was red flagged after an involving three bikes just minutes into the newcomers sighting laps.

Practices were due to restart on the Billown Circuit after the incident was cleared.

However, racing was first delayed due to ‘capacity issues’ at Noble’s Hospital.

Monday’s practices were eventually scrapped altogether around an hour later.

It has since been confirmed that Irish competitor Anthony O’Carroll was critically injured in the crash.

At around 10pm on Monday he was airlifted to the Walton Centre for Neurosciences on the Coastguard Search and Rescue Helicopter.

Fellow rider Aiden Cleary from Draperstown in Northern Ireland suffered an ankle injury in the incident has since been discharged.

Scariff rider Jacque Foley was also involved in the crash but escaped unhurt. Manx Care said that two extremely unwell patients unrelated to the Southern 100 were admitted to the Emergency Department via ambulance and were being treated around the time Monday night’s racing was taking place.

Both required a full ‘medical emergency team’ to treat them, Manx Care says.

Following the red flag incident, the healthcare provider says that it made an ‘overall assessment of the workload within the [A&E] department and across the wider hospital’.

Based on this assessment, Manx Care determined it ‘wouldn’t be able to safely care for another trauma case alongside the other patients in [A&E] requiring urgent care’.

OPEL SCALE

Like NHS hospitals in the UK, Nobel’s uses the Operational Pressures Escalation Level (OPEL) scale to identify pressures on some of its services and help healthcare facilities handle a crisis.

The scale ranges from the least severe classification, OPEL 1, which means the facility is operating at or close to normal.

The most severe classification is OPEL 4, formerly Black Alert, which means services are at crisis point and are unable to deliver ‘comprehensive’ care.

According to Manx Care, Noble’s Hospital was operating under ‘major pressure’ at OPEL 3 on Monday.

That classification was dropped to OPEL 2 on Tuesday, meaning that capacity across the hospital is currently ‘manageable’ but ‘starting to show signs of pressure.’