Have a happy and healthy New Year

NHS Lanarkshire is proud to serve the people of Lanarkshire and I’d like to pay tribute to our dedicated staff for their hard work and commitment in 2019.

This has been a year of many achievements and our inspirational staff, who are at the heart of our success, have been recognised through a number of prestigious national awards.

Our annual staff awards also celebrated our staff and volunteers, nominated by patients, carers and colleagues.

However, it’s not all about awards and it is important to acknowledge that many of our staff are involved in making improvements to ensure patients and service users receive the best care.

As well as many successes, this year has also had its challenges.

Recently, Lanarkshire’s A&E’s have been amongst the busiest in Scotland and coming into winter, we expect services to be even busier.

That’s why we’ve launched a winter campaign to help signpost people to get the right advice at the right time from the right healthcare professional for any illness or minor ailment and to only go to A&E in a real emergency.

You can find out more by visiting our website https://www.nhslanarkshire. scot.nhs.uk/experts/ As we look to 2020, there will be further public engagement on our exciting vision to replace University Hospital Monklands, culminating in a final decision on where the new state-of-the-art hospital should be located.

Monklands provides a number of Lanarkshire-wide services, including cancer care, and I would welcome your participation in this process.

Finally, I’d like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a happy and healthy NewYear and a very special thank you to everyone working over the festive period.