For medical staff - is your hospital a war zone?

[3746xvy734]

I am hearing the contrary to the media reports, many hospitals are empty in the UK - is that the case?

Not a medic but we've been at about 75% occupancy since end of March. Normally at 120%. Northern medium sized town hospital.

However staffing reduced significantly due to shielding/sickness/symptomatic house holds so it's not like there's tonnes of staff twiddling their thumbs. But yes, not as catastrophic (yet?) as we were expecting.

However we did have good planning, good contingencies and were able to make extra capacity due to support from other organisations such as private hospitals and support from palliative care homes etc.

We're now planning for a sustained significant level of covid patients rather than a spike and then return to normal. 75% OPD and theatre activity also cancelled, 75% reduction in attends to A&E but of those who do attend, most are admitted.

I’m ex NHS and have spoken to my old colleagues who say that the hospital is eerily quiet. ITU is full and they have blue and red wards ( covid and non covid) but the corridors are empty due to no visitors etc. It certainly isn’t a war zone .

contrary to the media reports

What is the media saying about how full the hospitals are?

What is the media saying about how full the hospitals are

The media is saying, or giving the impression, that hospitals are overrun.

ITU and the Covid wards are busy but the other areas not as much. I work in paediatrics and we aren’t busy. That’s not to say we’re enjoying it, as we aren’t. It’s eerie and unsettling. We don’t know what’s going to happen on a day to day basis and there is a lot of uncertainty. All we want is to get back to our normal roles but that won’t be for some time.

We have a number of staff shielding/self-isolating though so that affects staffing numbers.

My friends in London are very busy though.

Not a war zone but very far from empty. It is quiet because there are no visitors and barely any outpatients but the wards are still busy. ICU still has ~twice the number of patients as usual. No issues with ventilators but concerns over supply of certain drugs. They're slowly starting things like cancer surgery again but it's going to take time to get back to previous functionality.

Which media in particular? What's the point of your question?

Where are these media reports saying we're overrun? I've certainly not seen any suggesting this in the UK. There was plenty of speculation regards to concerns we were going to be overrun and that was a big part of the justification for implementing the lock down which seems to have worked as intended.

To answer the question im a paramedic in Yorkshire and we're not over run, hospitals managing well currently.

3746 are you in the UK?

I have not seen this from UK media. But I wonder if its being reported differently in other countries.

The media love making out everything is worse than it is. We have Nightingale hospitals empty. Nurses on here say hospitals are virtually empty. We all make out the NHS are all saving lives and everyone in the NHS is a saint....but nobody is there!!!!
Saw a picture this morning of 5 ppe'd up nurses all lying on the corridor floor in a hospital, looking exhausted, akin to the firemen after Grenfell. My first thought was "why havent they ripped off that Ppe that they were head to toe in?" As you hear how hog it all is...Then realised they were possibly going back in after being spreadeagled all over a dirty corridor floor.

Hot not hog

No they are not saying that. ICUs are very busy. The rest of the hospitals are quieter but with more staff off. And it depends very much on where you are. Why? Things are cancelled to reduce spread not necessarily to make capacity.

In fact I've just had a look on the BBC news app for nhs and stories referring to capacity all reference the excess itu beds and spare capacity, certainly not doom and gloom in the media.
"On 22 April, the Health Secretary Matt Hancock told the House of Commons that: "We now have over 3,000 spare critical care beds in the NHS...three times more than we had at the start of this crisis." He added that there are, in total, "10,000 beds currently free" in the NHS."

Were your sources from the UK or possible not reputable/ Facebook shares? Any links?

One of my neighbours works in A&E and she said it's been eerily quieter than normal but theyve "enjoyed" not having so many time wasters. Their hospital is still full to capacity (ICU is over flowing) and they've not started outpatient surgeries yet.

My dd was I hospital all last week on a covid ward initially. She was the only one then when she transferred there was her and two other children the whole week. The place was deserted thankfully. Large hospital

Obviously people aren't wandering about and visitors were only one per patient.

Journo alert

Yeah I got a whiff of lazy journalist

The hospitals WILL be quiet that is the point of the stay at home message - not to overwhelm the NHS

Indeed ours is half empty

All routine, non-emergency outpatient work stopped to deploy people to the front line and the expected demand didn't materialise.

However that doesn't mean it was an over reaction. No-one had a crystal ball. It's better we have spare capacity than scenes like Italy and New York.

It also doesn't mean we can just start everything up again. We have started to plan for how to do it but we can't just go back to business as usual or we will be spreading the virus around vulnerable people via outpatient waiting rooms and hospital wards. We need PPE and testing to be a lot better than they are and we will need to run much reduced numbers.

I must read different media than you op. There’s been a number of reports that hospitals are quiet

I think people also forget that number of beds does not equal number of places available - staffing will dictate capacity to a degree, especially in higher dependency settings, so if staff are isolating or sick, that reduces capacity even if there is ward space. It’s much more complex than it looks on the surface.

My wife is a nurse redeployed to a Covid ward. Large north west hospital. 16 bed ward. Was full when she started there a few weeks ago, and any time a bed came free it was filled. Numbers gradually dropping last week-10 days. 7 patients yesterday. Similar numbers in other covid wards in the hospital.

I think people are starting to realise hospitals are quiet and the message that all nhs workers are not actually overworked saints is getting through.

Because of lockdown our ICU numbers are almost back to normal but 2-3 weeks ago it was horrendously busy, doubling or even trippling up with patients, non-icu trained nurses taking level 3 patients under supervision, very basic care nowhere near the standard normally provided and using anaesthetic equipment with next to little training. Patients were incredibly sick, no let up whatsoever, so one patient would be intubated, 10 mins later another proned, then a death, then another patient deteriorates, then an admission, all the while other things are going on too, staff needing breaks, it was literally non-stop adrenaline charged and extremely stressful with many staff out of their comfort zones.
Lockdown has definitely helped with the volume of work, not sure about other wards but most of the surgical ones were shut and staff redeployed to make space for ICU - at its height we were using at least 3 extra wards for capacity.
Dread to think what will happen once things are relaxed.

I actually think the op is getting a hard time here ..it was only a couple of weeks ago if anyone mentioned on here that hospitals were quiet and that nurses were being asked to take leave, you were virtually shot!!!