Those in hospital nurse manager jobs will be in urgent need of a staffing boost this winter, after it was revealed that the plummeting temperatures the country is about to experience are tied with an increase in hospital admissions.

As reported by The Press Association, every 5°C drop in temperature boosts the number of adults admitted for serious injuries by three per cent. Furthermore, snow increases admissions by eight per cent.

That's according to a study which tracked hospital data and weather patterns for a decade.

Researchers found that for every additional 10mm of rainfall, trauma admissions will grow by 2.2 per cent. They revealed that rain is linked to more accidents, despite ice, snow and frost making driving conditions more treacherous.

Giles Pattison, who worked on the study, thinks the reason is that the UK doesn't prepare for the winter months as well as other countries do. He said that in the mid west of America, hospital admissions actually decrease when the weather drops, despite dramatic falls in temperature.

"If it snows there, there's a siege mentality, people take a snow day, stay home and don't go to work," he explained. "Here, it's different. People go out to work, or they don't really know how to drive in the conditions and they get into accidents."

However, it's not just the colder weather that causes an increase in hospital admissions. Researchers also discovered that every 5°C increase in temperature above the daily maximum during the summer causes a 10 per cent increase in the number of children admitted to hospital.

This is valuable information for nurse managers, who will be able to use weather forecasts to get an idea of times when they will need to increase the staff in the emergency ward to cope with an increase of admissions.