to ask NHS staff if it still feels like winter to them?

[NHSmadam]

Because it does to me, in fact I think today was almost worse. Lots of people coming in and nobody going out of hospital because they are all too sick. Discharges delayed because care is not in place haven't dropped, outliers haven't dropped, cancellation of elective activity hasn't stopped. WHEN WILL IT BE 'SUMMER'? Or is it always winter all year round now?

Or is it just me and the hospital I work in?

I find the same, also after work I need a fleece on because it's so hot in the building that when I go outside it doesn't feel as hot as it is.

I find the same. Bit sick of watching gorgeous days go by when I don't even have time to eat lunch in the building let along go outside.

It's just getting more stressful, with more and more adding to the workload.

I don't think it's the volume of patients ( but less is better) it just takes more time.

I'm an NHS cleaner who also does bank shifts as a NCA. The documentary info for notes and other things take a lot of time, time I could spend actually tending to patient needs.

Like you I spend break times going to the shop for papers ect for patients and catching up with notes

It's so, so hard to get some people out of hospital. Not for any reason other than they're ill. It's as simple as that. Doesn't matter how slick we get, you can't discharge a sick person.

No such thing as winter pressure any more, it's all year round. Running at higher occupancy than ever before. We get folk out more quickly, but there are lots more admissions. And lots more complex admissions.

It's easing up a little for us, in terms of winter bed pressure, but given our department doesn't have any windows, it's hard to tell what season it is once you're inside!

I feel your pain!

I don't work on wards any more, but the feeling is very much the same amongst my ex colleagues.

Some are having great difficulty in discharging patients who aren't independent enough to be home alone without care, yet are not unwell enough to be in hospital. Just getting external care resources arranged for them can take weeks.

I don't work on Wards either (in theatres) and we feel the knock on effect. We cancel non day cases due to lack of beds. They have turned day surgery into a medical escalation ward so day cases are affected. We can't move patients from recovery so cases we do are delayed waiting for recovery. Oh and our dept is undergoing a full refurb so have to work around that.

You know nothing, John Snow.

It's beginning to feel like it's easing, but I said that on here 3-4 months ago and was badly wrong. Hoping it gets sorted before we crash headlong into next winter.

My job is to find the care packages for people coming out of hospital. In the last year we had the amount of care agencies we can use cut from 25 to 5. This was supposedly to streamline services and provide a better level of care.

We used to wait about 2 hours for a decision from one of the 25agencies and they could generally start within 2 days. Now we wait days for a reply from the care agency, and they give us start dates up to ten days away.

But our local authority has cut the prices it pays these agencies dramatically, although it maintains that they are still paying over national average.

And then they wonder why our local hospital complains we are blocking beds. I used to love my job, I bloody hate it now.

Our hospitals 'winter pressures' ward is still open ( and our ward is expected to staff it )! It's June FFS.

I work in A&E and there has been no real let up. Yesterday the queue of ambulances never reduced past 10, it was chaos and the people managers that never usually get away from their desks the canteen were, IMO, making things worse by interfering and adding much more stress to the mix.

Oh well, another day, another dollar!

I work as a Community Matron so i am on the 'other side' trying to prevent patients with long term conditions coming in to you. I can honestly say that i see no difference between now and winter. I have regulars who, no matter how hard i try, end up back in because they are so poorly (heart failure, COPD). We have to rotate into our local hospital over the winter (under winter pressures) to try and identify our patients and facilitate fast discharge but your right, you can't send sick people home otherwise they just end up back in again!

I thought this was going to be a thread about how hot hospitals are. Do they not have air conditioning.

Seriously though i agree OP. There just doesnt seem to be any let up. There isnt really anything you can do to stop people being sick and needing treatment but there are things that can be done to ease the pressure of hospitals. That is more hospitals, staff, out of hours services, better gp services. Oh how it sounds so simple.

Loving Trapper's post. It is all rather GOT!

Interesting to see it's just as crap out in the community and arranging care. We had a better day today but we'd need weeks of good days to get back to where we need to be.

I'm in private sector but we're also heaving, inundated with referrals (NHS and private)