To wonder if the Nightingale Hospitals are open?

[christmaspigeon]

I keep watching the BBC news and seeing how hospitals are at capacity and people waiting in ambulance bats. Does anyone know if they are using the new Nightingale hospitals? I suppose even if they are open there's only so many staff to go round. I feel so sorry for the NHS workers rushed off their feet

My elderly father has been in and out of hospital with a number of scares pneumonia and heart issues and local hospital has absolutely on its knees long before covid. 90%-95% off the nursing staff are absolutely lovely, caring, run ragged and go above and beyond.
I would imagine this situation only getting much worse with covid.
I have also heard from a reliable source who works for the NHS that they don’t have enough staff to staff the Nightingale hospitals.

I don't think they were ever really intended to be fully functioning hospital wards but more as somewhere to deal with the overflow of bodies when hospital morgues became full as was seen in some countries and was predicted as being a worse case scenario.

@Phoenix21

When was that dated *@PrincessNutNuts*?

It was mothballed over summer but there’s defo something happening over there.

Today

@pennylane83

I don't think they were ever really intended to be fully functioning hospital wards but more as somewhere to deal with the overflow of bodies when hospital morgues became full as was seen in some countries and was predicted as being a worse case scenario.

Our local hospital used a refrigerated lorry

@WhereToMissToTheStars

Is it true that they had not toilets or bathrooms? I can’t believe it.

No toilets on "the wards". Just the ones in the foyer.

@safariboot

If there’s not enough staff to operate the nightingale hospitals, why were they built in the first place?

I suppose the logic was an understaffed hospital was better than no hospital.

But the Nightingale hospitals were built with patients sedated and on invasive ventilation, and that is no longer the favoured treatment for Covid-19, early treatment with a non-invasive oxygen mask is now preferred.

The logic was

"Look plebs! A shiny thing!"

Surely the first thing you do before undertaking a multi million pound adventure is ensure there will be the staff to run it?

Yes you would think so but not in The Boris & Matt shitshow

Thete are no staff for the nightingale hospitals. Hospitals are shuffling ITU patients to hospitals in other locations because there is a desperate shortage of ITU beds.
The Nightingale hospitals are a shocking waste of money. They should have been used to quarantine elderly peope between hospital discharge and their return to care homes. Anybody with a brain cell would have done that.

@Alarae

Don't take this as gospel, however when I was speaking with my mum (she works within the NHS) she mentioned that the Nightingale hospitals were not being used because they didn't even have enough staff in the normal hospitals, let alone extras to go run the Nightingales.

This may be personal sentiment more than anything, but lack of staffing makes sense.

This.

Ours here In jersey sits empty. Because there are no staff.

Our local field hospital in Wales is very close to capacity. Our ICU unit is full. Local health boards are desperate for staff to prone patients.

If it’s not like this where you are you need to realise just how rapidly it can change. We were doing pretty well in November, and it suddenly flipped.

I just finishrd a video call with a family member who is a junior reg in ITU. He spent his 2 days off alone, eating ready meals from the only local shop that was open, because he has had no time off to shop or cook. He is supervising junior doctors who have no ITU experience or training. Some are struggling because they have little English. He looks absolutely exhausted. It is an absolute shambles.
And, he hasn't even been offered a vaccination.

I wondered this at the time, where are all the additional staff going to come from. Absolutely furious that I was right. Who has profitted from this? They need naming and shaming.

It will be more cronies and relatives of the PM and cabinet. It is corruption on a massive scale.

Sadly our is very much in use. It's 2/3 FULL.

www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/there-no-more-back-up-19516408

@endofthelinefinally

Thete are no staff for the nightingale hospitals. Hospitals are shuffling ITU patients to hospitals in other locations because there is a desperate shortage of ITU beds. The Nightingale hospitals are a shocking waste of money. They should have been used to quarantine elderly peope between hospital discharge and their return to care homes. Anybody with a brain cell would have done that.

Except anyone with any understanding of the needs of the frail elderly would know the Nightingales and Seacole were entirely unsuitable to rehabilitation or elderly care.

Yes I heard they are going to be staffed by magic fairies!

The money they spent on the nightingale hospitals could have been allocated more wisely.

They are not and we’re never intended as mortuary facilities nor for end of life care. They wee meant to be large capacity critical care units for stable ventilated patients. There is a small step down, high dependency unit for when people are weaned off ventilators.

Staffing is the issue. The recommendation is that all ventilated patients have 1:1 nursing care with a high percentage of nurses having post graduate critical care qualifications. Several areas are now only able to provide 1:2 ratio and a reduction in the proportion of critical care trained staff.

Trained staff cannot be in the hospitals and in the temporary facility at the same time. There are increasing numbers of staff absent because of the virus. That complicates matters further. You really can’t just say someone is a nurse, so they can do it.

Slightly different arrangements outside of England.

@endofthelinefinally

The money they spent on the nightingale hospitals could have been allocated more wisely.

This

Anyone know about the one at the NEC in Birmingham?

Staffing is the problem.

Critical care transfers are going through the roof in London atm. Junior medical staff redeployment will almost certainly start from tomorrow.

Also, the Nightingale would only accept stable patients with single organ failure, which was very few covid patients.

My point was that there were never going to be enough ITU trained staff to cover hospital and nightingale ITU beds. It was never thought through. Just a PR stunt and a dreadful waste of money.

Wow, if they were partially meant as a PR exercise to reassure people they failed massively on me. One of the only two times I’ve cried over this whole Covid mess; when they announced them I cried hysterically on the shower so no one could see. They made my blood run cold, I just saw them as halls of death. Somewhere people would be sent to die. The thought of my parents being sent to their death there and never seeing them, being all alone, paralysed me with fear, I’ve never felt like that before (or ever will hopefully!) might sound a tad bit melodramatic and in retrospect it was, but honestly I can’t imagine people finding them reassuring!!

Not helped by the low number of established critical care beds per capita.

Baby of mine yes I agree, not reassuring at all.

No toilets for patients or staff
No showers
No catering for patients or staff
No labs
No clinical waste
No blood bank
No pharmacy

No nursing staff
No porters
No cleaners
No caterers

A few hundred beds and pillows don’t make a hospital but they do earn you Brownie points and favourable column inches in the short term.