Faulty air conditioning caused chaos at the Great Western Hospital when it knocked out the phone and computer systems.

The air conditioning units that were supposed to be cooling down the hospital's servers stopped working, leading to the temperature in the room rising too high. 

This caused all of the vital phone and computer systems to stop working, meaning that staff couldn't access appointment or patient records, answer phones or call out yesterday. 

Chief executive Kevin McNamara praised staff for carrying on in extremely difficult circumstances and apologised for disruption to patients. 

He described the issues as piling on pressure for staff already dealing with several ongoing problems, like Covid, big emergency demand and staffing gaps. 

He said a "hugely impressive team effort" from several different departments at the GWH meant that several services are able to continue, but unfortunately some appointments were cancelled at short notice.