News

Fail! Somebody accidentally sent an email to the ENTIRE NHS staff

1.2 million people got a 'test email'

This is hilarious!

Imagine if you were the person who did this…

A ‘test’ email was accidentally sent to 1.2m NHS staff and managed to crash the whole system on Monday morning.

NHS staff used Twitter to complain about an email that “inadvertently” included everyone on the mailing list of the NHSmail system.

Thousands of replies were sent in response and some asked to be removed from the mailing list.

Staff used social media to encourage others to stop replying to the message.

Meme-ville went crazy!

In a statement – sent via text message owing to the email system problems – an NHS Digital spokeswoman said: “Some users have experienced short delays in the NHSmail system this morning. Action has been taken to resolve this issue.

“A number of email accounts have been operating slower than normal due to an NHSmail user setting up an email distribution list which inadvertently included everyone on the NHSmail system.

“As soon as we became aware of the issue, we deleted the distribution list so that no one else could respond to it. We anticipate that the issue will be rectified very soon.”

A message sent to NHSmail users and seen by The Guardian described the email as a “high severity service incident” and said that an “issue” with a distribution list meant that test emails had been more widely circulated than planned, which, combined with the replies, had left some users with “slow performance” of their emails.

It also confirmed that the distribution list had now been removed, and that “associated emails are being traced and cleared”.

Just what everybody needed on a Monday morning!


Nancy Brown
Associate Editor