Stay at home, protect the nhs, save lives

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AIBU to find this slogan annoying especially how it seems to prioritise protecting an organisation. The ‘save lives’ bit seems almost secondary to protecting the NHS. It is also dangerous and probably contributes to people avoiding going for treatment when they should be and thus leading the increase in deaths from other causes.

We shouldn’t be ‘protecting the NHS’ as though it is something sacred. It should be ‘Stay at home, save lives, don’t spread Covid’

In fact may be if we kill off the NHS via this as people realise it costs a fortune, has killed off more people per head of population than any other provider in Europe we could restart it in a different way with a different payment system so some good might come out of this crisis after all - end of the NHS as we now know it.

Yep I’ve thought this from the start. Protect people too!!

What does this mean?! What do you mean protect people too? Protecting the NHS is about protecting people. It's literal primary function is to preserve life. You protect it from being overwhelmed, it protects you. I honestly can't believe people can't understand this 🤦‍♀️

@Xenia What kind of payment system would you like to see in place?

It's literal primary function is to preserve life

By cancelling cancer treatments? By raising the assessment criteria for hospital admissions so high that for one month patients struggling to breathe were not admitted? By cancelling surgeries? By creating a huge backlog of cancelled treatment which will cause delays for who knows how long? I sometimes wonder whether people in the UK have any idea what a functioning health care system looks like in the rest of the developed world.

BovaryX fair one, but the discussion was about the meaning of "protect the NHS" as some people seemed to imagine that had nothing to do with protecting people - you've gone quite far away from that as a discussion point.

The NHS is massively flawed, I don't disagree with you. But it is the system we have at the moment. And in the face of a pandemic we have to work with what we have. If you want a system closer to eg America, get yourself some crippling expensive health insurance and go private

What kind of payment system would you like to see in place?

One that doesn’t cost her anything.

I wasn't aware of those NEWS changes. Probably because I don't live in London. I had read about it, here and papers, but not anything that has been confirmed.

That didn't happen here, we had as many ambulances come through as usual... rural market town with a very high % of older people in a variety of residential settings.

Our local GH staff have been tweeting, Facebook etc about the changes in access to A+E and encouraging people who need them to use them, as have our GPs.

It must have been bloody terrifying to live somewhere where you know the NEWS has been changed.

We do need a different system with an element of personal financial contribution, possibly a mix of insurance and public provision. I don't think it's anything to be proud of that we don't ask for more than tax take from people earning £50k, £60k, £70k when the result is that we have such poor patient outcomes across the board compared to other third industrial wave countries.

Surely it's stay at home to protect the NHS (and stop it being overloaded) , which in turn will save lives. I think it's clear.

One that doesn’t cost her anything. 🤣😂That's what I was expecting.

naturalbornwoman - here's some evidence:

A daily mail link? Seriously?

The PP said nurseS dying at home and in nurses accommodation having been denied treatment. That is very serious and is presented as fact. The link doesn’t support that allegation, it’s about a nurse who died, but there is no indication that she or her family sought further help as her condition worsened or that she needed to be hospitalised at the point that they did call an ambulance. The opinion of the grieving family won’t necessarily align with the medical facts.

I was confused because Ponoka7 insinuated the protocol had been changed so that you needed a higher score to trigger an admission but then Xenia mentioned that it had been reduced as not enough people were being admitted, so was it increased and then reduced to normal or reduced further than normal iyswim ?
You do of course need someone to recognise that you are becoming more unwell in the first instance, then you need someone to be able to relay that information in a way so that it is recognised the situation is getting worse and the correct advice or help is sent.
The biggest issue with this virus appears to be that people, even the normally fit and well, can plummet from being generally ok to critical in such a short space of time. Thats why I found the corona taxis mentioned in the article so interesting, a way of checking up on people when they are entering the dangerous days of the virus and having the ability to recognise warning signs and get them the treatment before they become seriously unwell.

@NaturalBornWoman

Not a nurse, but it begs the question how many elderly people have died, when some treatment like a CPAP machine might have saved their lives:

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8280913/Son-55-nurses-Covid-stricken-father-81-health-released-hospital-die.html

The biggest issue with this virus appears to be that people, even the normally fit and well, can plummet from being generally ok to critical in such a short space of time. Thats why I found the corona taxis mentioned in the article so interesting, a way of checking up on people when they are entering the dangerous days of the virus and having the ability to recognise warning signs and get them the treatment before they become seriously unwell.

I only know 2 people who have been diagnosed with the virus and both were monitored at home after seeking help, one was subsequently hospitalised and treated with oxygen for a couple of days and the other recovered without going to hospital. Both in different parts of the country. I’m not saying everything has been perfect but allegations such as nurses are dying in their accommodation having been denied treatment need to be backed up with evidence and not swallowed hook line and sinker like on MN currently. People who contract the virus are frightened as well as unwell. It’s not unreasonable to think that a significant number of people who would prefer to be in hospital just to be on the safe side don’t actually need to be admitted, and there are some very good reasons not to send people into hospital if they don’t actually need to be there.

This is from the Times article. Because some posters have either not read it, have failed to grasp its implications. Or don't want to acknowledge what happened. For one month NHS London instructed its paramedics that even people who were exhibiting serious symptoms need not be admitted to hospital. This was an instruction in operation from March 10th to April 12th. Early intervention is preferable because once a patient requires a ventilator? The statistics are grim. As the Times article states, 65 percent died.

News2 allocates a score to vital signs including breathing rate, oxygen saturation, temperature, blood pressure, pulse rate and level of consciousness. Originally a score of five indicated a need for hourly monitoring. From March 12 paramedics in the capital were told that suspected Covid-19 patients scoring as high as six might not need to be hospitalised. The guidance was then changed on April 10 to advise that people scoring between three and five should be taken in for assessment. The revelation will add to fears that some patients have only reached hospital when they are already critically ill. Yesterday a study by the Intensive Care National Audit & Research Centre revealed that two-thirds of Covid-19 patients who had needed a ventilator died. Of 4,078 NHS intensive care patients where an outcome was known, 2,067 died and 2,011 were discharged. That equates to a mortality rate of 50.7%. Of those requiring mechanical ventilation in critical care 1,744 (65.4%) died and 923 (34.6%) were discharged. London still had the most Covid-19 patients

There has been some research i believe that early intervention helps ( oxygen) and the hospitals deaths do appear high and no.s in hospital quite low. I have come the conclusion that people were not getting into hosptial early enough. I realise the hospitals could not be overwhemled ( protected) but i think the balance was/is wrong, more should have been let in. I dont think the nhs is rubbish far from it.

Bovary, yes that is what i read and I am in the worst London boroughs for Covid and my hospital was full so in that peak period the NHS certainly would not have been there for many of us here.

One London mother of 3 eventually got an ambulance but it turne her away. Her hsuabdn found her dead on the bathroom floor the next day. one mumsnetter's 9 year old son called one when she was almost dead and the ambulance refused to come out - whilst I think the lady did recover at home the turning away of people by ambulances has not worked too well and in fact my instructions to my sons in those 4 weeks were if I were bad you drive me to A&E within 15 minutes - you don't wait 6 - 9 hours for an ambulance that might not come out anyway.

Always a good idea to get someone to drive you to hospital, instead of waiting for an ambulance, If it is safe to do so. Unless something like a heart attack, you may well get there quicker. (Ambulances are necessary if you need help/support ‘on site’ and during the journey)

Yep, I already told my husband to drive me to hospital and throw me out on the floor and leave me - and not to call an ambulance

I bought a pulse oximeter so I could see my O2 sats - anything below 95 I told him we were to agree to take each other to hospital

In London obviously

I detest it. Especially when you see how many if their own staff ate spreading the virus. A relative of mine went into hospital with with a broken shoulder bone. Clean bill of health and was in isolation. 3 weeks later tested positive for it. Back into hospital. Shy on earth aren’t they using these “rainbow hospitals” for these patients?

@BovaryX thank you for clarifying the issue with the NEWS score, I don't know or really understand why the ambulance service were instructed to do that ( or where that instruction came from ) or how widespread it was as advice nationally.
From a purely clinical point of view, the NEWS score has been designed to save lives by recognising that someone is deteriorating and ensuring they get appropriate prompt treatment. Not using it as it has been designed to be used, will inevitably lead to people not getting the care they need, when they need it.
Are you sitting down BovaryX ? because I am going to agree with you on this particular incident. I think whoever decided that it would be a good idea, is going to struggle to explain the rationale for doing this, in front of a panel.

@NaturalBornWoman thats really interesting to hear, do you know who monitored them in the community and how often that was done ?

@frumpety I don’t know exactly, of them was my grandson’s stepfather and grandson told me that he was seen several times and they spoke to ‘the Covid nurses’ each day. They are in a hotspot. The other is my daughter’s sister in law who is a dental nurse and my daughter said that she wasn’t feeling well at all but her condition was being kept under review. I’ll ask her if she knows how it was managed.

@Lily193 - in answer to your question from this morning, it is my understanding that stopping cervical smear screening was to free up labs to test for Covid 19, not to protect people having smears from catching covid 19. A system that is not overwhelmed can set up covid hospitals and covid-free ones, as they are now trying to do, now that covid numbers are better under control. They need to have capacity to test for more than covid 19, though, in order not to let many people die of other conditions. So yes, not doing smears, etc, is a sign of a system that is not coping. Hopefully only temporarily enough not to result in too many normally unnecessary deaths, but these sorts of actions will result in other deaths.

Wouldn't "Stay home, save lives, protect the NHS" have worked better?