Six in ten UK ICUs cannot function normally because they are so short of nurses, a survey has found. Patients whose lives are at risk are being turned away from their local hospitals because of a lack of intensive care beds, doctors who work in those units have revealed. Four in five intensive care units (ICUs) are having to send patients to other hospitals as a result of chronic bed and staff shortages. Units are so beleaguered that some may no longer be able to care properly for the NHS’s sickest patients, the leader of the intensive care specialty has warned.

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