What the fuck was the point in the Nightingale hospital?

[QOFE]

I just don't understand

I thought it was meant to take coronavirus patients to free up normal hospitals so the NHS didn't grind to a halt?

But I've just read an article saying it's likely to be wound down as it's not taken a new patient in over a week and the most it's ever had was 35, despite having 4000 beds.

But there's thousands of people who haven't been treated or admitted to hospital when they should have been, whilst a dedicated hospital sat empty? Elderly people being sent back to care homes to spread the virus to staff and the other patients due to no space for them to stay in hospital, but an empty hospital that they could have gone to instead?

What's that about then? Like... What was the point?

Sorry for strange typo.

NHS has trained up lots of staff to do ICU work but they were redeployed. Also created capacity on site for extra covid care but they will need this back. But capacity has been there.

Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.

I’ll bet you think the Y2K issue was all a hoax too.

The government are damned if they do and damned if they don't. My brother said this to me today and he's a staunch labour supporter.

Please don't ask me for a link but I have read that the main reason t he nightingale hospitals haven t been used is because they are not equipped for non covid patients.

Propaganda.

Propaganda

You don’t think a Labour government would have looked to Italy and Spain and thought we need to be better prepared (for the first peak)

My friend is an icu nurse. She applied to help out but never heard back! I know of other people in health care positions that also volunteered to be bed buddies but were told there were no positions available. Just reinforces to me how crap our government have been in handling the situation

It was a performance piece.
They did not have the staff to make it run and perhaps never intended to.

Regarding telephone consultations: most of people I have telephoned, have delinced to come into hospital and prefer telephone consultations when offered the chance of both. People are declining chemo because of the resulting reduced resistance.

In part the reason so many of these hospitals were not used was because there were strict guidelines about who could and couldn't be admitted. So for example a critically ill patient with covid who needed dialysis due to AKI was not suitable. Funnily enough many ICU patients fell into this category. Also there were parameters of ventilation which couldn't be exceeded I believe but not got them at hand.
@xenia for someone who never uses the NHS you seem to be quite opinionated about it. You say 'it needs a rehaul, it employs 1.4 million
people' Maybe it needs those people. Things may be quiet now but give it a few months and no doubt staffing levels will be horrendous again !

I see it as an insurance policy. Not needed (as yet) fortunately, but there if needed later.

You don't take out holiday insurance cover and then come back from your holiday and moan about not needing it, do you?

I am just thankful they remain mostly empty as it means more people not needing them.

We might still need them. We're yet to come out of lockdown. We could have another spike.

JTo answer OP's question : Panic building. Just like people panic bought stuff they now don't know what to do with, government/s felt they had to do something and this was an obvious and easy sell.

I'm no supporter of this Tory government but in this case they did the right thing. As an insurance policy. Having insurgence is good. It's expensive but you hope you never have to claim on it.

Building a hospital is done by soldiers (ghurkas mainly from the pictures
I saw)
Running involves Nurses
of which the UK is many thousands short even before covid struck

its a bit like the Millennium projects where capital funding built white elephants that could not afford staff

Better to have had them and not needed them than needed them and not had them.

"It is good news that they are not filled!
can you not see that?"

Doesn't reading this thread prove that it's a lot more complicated than that?

Doesn't reading this thread prove that it's a lot more complicated than that?

Well in one way, but regardless it IS positive that they aren’t rammed full of people with covid? Go on say just one thing positive.

To great fanfare Londons Nightingale opened, the MSM reported it had a 4000 bed capacity.
It had 500 beds and the does not have the staff for these.

Yes, its great they weren't needed but to me the real scandal is that so many CV patients were left to self treat at home... personally know of one sufferer who was told via his wife, to say at home, he was very ill, bed ridden, struggling to breath, she was told Do not go to hospital and call back if he gets worse

the whole idea was to use these hospitals to treat the less seriously ill not leave them at home.

Elderly people being sent back to care homes to spread the virus to staff and the other patients due to no space for them to stay in hospital, but an empty hospital that they could have gone to instead?

This is not as straightforward as you seem to think. Many people (obviously not all) who are in care homes have complex health conditions in many cases including dementia of varying types. For people in later stage dementia the idea of sending them to hospital away from their possessions, daily routines, the items that are familiar and the familiar carers to lie in a ward where everyone who treats them is dressed like a spaceman with visors and full PPE is frankly, cruel. Imagine how terrified they would be, and in reality with so many underlying conditions they may be unlikely to survive covid whatever setting they are in. Why is it worse to allow them to be in a familiar place with familiar carers for their last days? The key missing part is infection control rather than that such people are not being taken to hospital to die.

I am not saying they weren't needed.

I am saying they weren't used ...

Not the same thing!

What was the point in building them if they then couldn't be staffed properly and people were still left to die at home and sent back into care homes to infect and kill the other vulnerable residents?

Clearly there was a need for far more people to get medical care far earlier than they did. But they weren't getting it, and the designated special brand new hospitals were sat empty while people died with no medical care.

That's the bit I didnt understand. Why people were being refused treatment and discharged to infect dozens of others, when apparently the NHS had spare unused capacity!

Like so much of life now, (everybody clap at 8pm on Thursday - even nurses, clapping themselves ; being shopped for not following rules) Nightingale seems to be like something out of North Korea, the sparkling new hospital with no patients in it. We are sidling towards a very unhealthy socio-political set up.

That they couldn’t be staffed is hearsay and I have definitely not heard that.

Why people were being refused treatment and discharged to infect dozens of others, when apparently the NHS had spare unused capacity!

Well there is definitely a train of thought that having lots of highly infectious people in hospital is a bad thing and that the virus is more contained at home. I think they got the level of admission wrong, however not everything was/ is known. The approach is evolving and mistakes were bound to be made.

*Callimanco Sun 03-May-20 17:28:06
Elderly people being sent back to care homes to spread the virus to staff and the other patients due to no space for them to stay in hospital, but an empty hospital that they could have gone to instead?

But if they were sick enough to be ventilated, then they would be sedated, so wouldn't have been distressed at all. Whether it is right to ventilate an elderly person suffering with advanced dementia is another question.

It's not better contained in care homes

Even in normal domestic households it just spreads like wildfire.