Less than 2 hospital beds per 1000 people...

[isitorisntit]

Apparently the government, despite the horrendous situation we are currently in, are planning to cut beds further. Just look at this to see how we compare (numbers have worsened since).

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_hospital_beds

Something has to change.

Are you really going by wikipedia info?

But in standard times 2 beds per 1000 people is probably perfectly sufficient. Most people don't go to hospital regularly and if they get ill, are ill at home.

It's totally impractical to have loads of extra capacity "just in case".

But at normal times that's totally fine.

No country has the bed capacity for a pandemic sitting around empty "just in case" - it's totally impractical.

Why have you linked wikipedia? Literally anyone could write that. I could go on there now and edit it. Absolutely pointless.

Two beds per thousand people seems reasonable. That's capacity for 136,000 at any time.

How are they cutting beds further ? Haven't they just Opened the Nightengale hospital ?And planning more around the country?

Look how it compares to other developed countries. The Nightengale is only temporary. You can find out this info from other, more reliable sources, it's just the table was clear.

fullfact.org/health/do-we-have-fewer-hospital-beds-most-europe/

This is old, 2014 and numbers are apparently set to drop to less than 2 per 100 (once the pandemic is over). The NHS has been and will continue to be cut to the bone.

No we don’t have enough hospital beds in “normal” times. That’s why operations are often cancelled, corridors are full of patients on trolleys. And constant emails go out to Doctors urging them to discharge pronto! My dh gets them every day and it makes his blood boil. It’s no secret that pressure is sometimes put on staff to discharge too early in order to free up beds.
We’ve lost 200 beds in our Trust in the last 10 years. A lot of that was due to austerity measures and the need to cut back.
People think the NHS is only having a hard time right now. It’s been in bloody crisis for years!

The cuts in The NHS started a long time before the Conservative government got on I was redeployed twice in 2005 due to NHS cuts the NHS was,nt great under the Labour government ,And he NHS is in crisis but throwing money at it won't help ,it needs a complete overhaul.

People who think it's normal, it's not. Germany has closer to 10. We have one of the lowest number in Western Europe.

Actually we saw huge improvements in our Trust under Labour. They provided lots of up front money to improve cancer survival. This meant we could invest in equipment/staff/ training, and increase capacity for appointments and procedures. We cut the waiting lists for urgent appointments from 12 weeks to 2 weeks. We cut the routine appointments from 9 months to 6 weeks!! All of this allowed us to lay the ground for becoming one of the first National Bowel Cancer screening centres.
Unfortunately since the austerity years the waiting lists have gone to shit again. Not surprising really, if you don’t invest you deteriorate.

Oh and I mentioned above about the bed closures......

Yeah it’s completely shit normally and extra shit now. I had to spend hours in a&e with sepsis last year because there was nowhere to put me. I could easily have died. It’s scandalous the way the NHS has been stripped.

It depresses me that people defend the underfunding of the NHS.
And even when this Covid thing is over people will forget what the NHS has to cope with and will go back to ignoring it and taking the staff for granted. And any cheeky Nurses or Doctors who might dare think of asking for a pay rise will be quickly put back in their box!

Re: Wikipedia

The information is referenced. Yes, you can change it but the Wiki editors are very quick to spot and change stuff back.

Wikipedia has been found to be at least as reliable as traditional print encyclopedias.

Don’t use it as your sole source for serious research and you’ll be fine.

Absolutely agree. Tory or labour government- immaterial. All as bad as each other.
Also add that staffing levels on some wards are atrocious but people only complain when it affects them personally.

missyB1 spot on. This will be forgotten and we’ll soon be smirking public sector workers with gold plated pensions again !

Shirking I meant but still fits

Now is not the time.

Actually Amelie it’s a very good time.