About us

Learn more about our hospital

The James Paget is a vibrant university hospital providing care to a population of 250,000 residents across east Norfolk and north-east Suffolk, as well as to the many visitors who come to this part of East Anglia.

Our main site in Gorleston is supported by the Newberry Clinic and other outreach clinics and facilities in the local area.

Ensuring our patients are central to everything we do is our priority.

Our vision is to be an innovative organisation delivering compassionate and safe patient care through a well led and motivated workforce.

Named after the famed surgeon Sir James Paget, who was born in Great Yarmouth in 1814 and was surgeon to Queen Victoria, the hospital officially opened on 21 July 1982.

We were established as a third wave NHS Trust in 1 April 1993 and became the first Foundation Trust in Norfolk and Suffolk on 1 August 2006 – officially becoming known as the James Paget University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

Being a Foundation Trust means we are more able to develop services to meet the needs of our local community with local people and staff directly involved in decisions about their hospitals.

We employ over 4,000 full-time and part-time staff, making us the largest local employer on this part of the east coast, and serve a catchment area which includes Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft and villages and smaller towns to the north, south and west of these urban centres.

We provide a full range of general acute services – including a 24/7 Emergency Department - plus a number of specialised services, including a hyperbaric chamber for ventilating and monitoring critically ill patients whilst they are receiving hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

We work with a number of local primary care teams, community services and other acute trusts, to ensure that patients receive the best care in the right place - and are fully involved in our local health and care partnership - Norfolk and Waveney Integrated Care System (ICS).

The Trust has around 500 inpatient beds located in the James Paget University Hospital. These are a mix of critical, intensive and high dependency care, general surgery and medicine, maternity, paediatrics and neonatal, and escalation beds used when we are experiencing high demand and need to deal with an increased number of patients needing our care.

We continually strive to improve clinical outcomes and patient experience to meet the needs of our patients and local population, and our hospital is firmly rooted in the local community.

We have a talented and loyal workforce, with a commitment to embrace and deliver improvement and change. Our staff act as ambassadors for the Trust and are guided by our ambitions, priorities and values. Our ambitions sit under four headings; Caring for our patients, Supporting our people, Collaborating with our partners and Enhancing our performance.

We pride ourselves on our continuing commitment to modernising and improving patient care.

As a University Hospital, the Trust trains over one third of the medical students from the University of East Anglia and has a strong national reputation for research and excellence in the quality of training facilities. We have also made huge progress in developing new roles and focusing on a 'Grow Your Own' approach to our staffing.

We look to embrace technology, reduce waste and work sustainably across the health and care system.

Listening to patients and carers so that we understand what matters, what works well and what we need to do to improve is also very important to us. If you would like to share your experience of the James Paget, good or bad, please view our Contact Us page to see how to get in touch.