To wonder what all the audiologists are doing?

[SallyLovesCheese]

Any audiologists out there?

From another thread, I'm just wondering what you're currently all doing. I had an appointment in April but it was cancelled so I'm guessing you have been redeployed? Have you all gone to similar areas within the hospital, or is it more random? Just realised I have little idea about where the health professionals whose clinics aren't currently running have been sent and now I'm curious!

(And any suggestions of when Audiology at your hospital might start running again? Or is it too early to even guess? I could really do with another hearing test!)

We have community dental nurses and neuro-electrophysiologists on our ICU. Doing basic nursing jobs (personal care, dressing changes etc), fetching and carrying, etc. They have been universally amazing - hard working, positive and completely unfazed by being redeployed somewhere miles out of their comfort zone.

Also lots of surgeons doing palliative care and family liaison - they seem to be very good at explaining things to families in plain English.

And one of our dentists very kindly fixed up my renal patient’s teeth while he was in with something unrelated (not Covid), meaning we can now activate him on the transplant list. If only we could keep them! Having a ward dentist is so useful

They are all going back now, I imagine most routine appointments will be restarting in June/July (we have started back already, but only for urgent cases).

Thanks, Christmas, that's amazing about that dentist! And all of the others too, of course.

Some AHPs are running phone/zoom appointments, some have been redeployed to other roles such as testing sites, cleaning on wards and working as healthcare assistants. They are all busily working away, often in brand new roles. Hats off to them imo.

My son has an audiology appointment coming up in a weeks time - they wrote to us to say it would be done over the phone (oh the irony!)

My niece is a university hospital physiotherapist. But she's been redeployed to work with the team working on the covid vaccination. Random!

I was on a waiting list for physio - I'd be happy with a zoom physio session just now!
My dentists called the other day to cancel my appointment, as if I would have expected a routine check up to go ahead!

Wow, saraclara, so something completely different!

I guess it's more random than I thought. They must be itching to get back to their usual roles.

I guess that simply having extra bodies to do the more mundane work, must help the established researchers focus on the the nitty gritty of the race to get a vaccine out.

We have some AHP's at the Nightingale helping with family liaison and assisting with palliative care patients, such as making memories hand prints etc, spending time with dying patients and video calls/updating family.

HTH

@HeyBlaby didn't think there were any patients in nightingale facilities

@Mrsmorton definitely have patients in NW Nightingale, I have been there for 4 weeks and just finished a night shift. I think most, if not all of the other Nightingales have stood down, plan for us is to remain open until the end of the year at a minimum (although absolutely everything here changes on a daily basis!)

Interesting, thank you. The Manchester model was planned as a step down facility IIRC? Why have they changed it to palliative?

@mrsmorton the purpose remains the same, some have reached their ceiling of care so come because of that, some come to us having reached some level of stability and having improved but then deteriorate for whatever reason that may be, the decision then is taken to palliate if that is the best decision for that patient. Most are not palliative however and are following a rehabiliative model of care (insofar as you can in what is effectively a field hospital)

An audiologist did my COVID swab at the drive through.

Gosh, HeyBlaby, I never thought practitioners like audiologists and similar would have to help with palliative care. Thay is tough for anyone, let alone if your normal day job is something completely different. So much respect for you all.

Are they COVID positive palliative patients? It's very interesting because I read an NHS England report on Thursday that didn't mention this at all and I now wonder if any of the information was correct. In fact it reported zero bed occupancy in any Nightingale site. Thanks for your replies.

@mrsmorton yes it is correct, I can assure you there is no NHS England report stating all Nightingales are empty. If so why have we still got 50 clinical staff up to consultant level on every shift? As I said, the Nightingale NW is planned to stay open until the end of the year, you can Google easily and find the quote from Andy Burnham.

Every patient in the Nightingale is Covid-19 positive when admitted, some will become negative in the course of their stay.

Obviously you know more about my job and place of work than me

There's no need to be like that! At no point have I said I know more about your job than you do. All I did was draw attention to potential misinformation. Please don't project onto me.

@mrsmorton I told you I work there, that we had patients and what the model was, you then said you were unsure if any of the information was correct.

Anyway, you can find the NHS Nightingale NW on Twitter, with their own account, maybe from that you can see it isn't misinformation.

Just off for a 9pm start to nurse my non-existent patients

If you read my post and try really hard with your comprehension... you will see that I was questioning the information sent by NHS England (not you) and thanked you for your replies. Have a great shift.

As an aside... the social media surrounding all Nightingale hospitals is fascinating.

@mrsmorton then apologies if I took it the wrong way, I'm a theatre nurse and work days only (in normal times) Maybe the, ward work, nights and sleep deprivation have took their toll!

Hopefully you will get some respite soon. None of you can carry on forever.