Thread for NHS staff

[LucheroTena]

How prepared do you think your place of work is? I work clinically in large teaching hospital and not at all confident we’re ready. Outside of wards there is very little planning and yet we have massive outpatient services. Elective stuff is being limited now but nowhere near enough capacity will be created. Millions in deficit so we’re operating on skeleton workforce and even when we can recruit no one wants to work here. Dozens of calls to our small team each day from worried patients, it’s taking up so much time to answer them all on top of already manic workload. Loads of staff with symptoms that are concerning but we’re not swabbing them and 111 uninterested unless they’ve travelled. Admin staff gleeful that they might soon be ‘working’ from home when truth is it’s difficult to get them to do much work on site let alone unsupervised. It doesn’t feel as though there is much consideration for clinical staff and now we’ll no doubt also be burdened with doing the jobs of admin. Never been as close to saying stuff it and quitting.

I don't believe we have enough supplies of proper masks in the hospital.

Also they are going to lock all the windows of the siderooms & keep the doors closed with the patients in there but there's no air con or air circulation at all.
It does seem strange to lock the windows.

Plus we are worried about what happens if confused or even just rebellious infected patients leave their rooms (they will be supposed to stay in them) - if they come near us they will infect us as outside of the rooms we will be in our uniforms not ppe.

The doors to the ward will be locked & no visitors allowed I believe which could cause issues also what about patients who smoke.

Our ward will be like an Acute Admissions unit for corona virus patients.

I try to ask questions at work but the clinical leader & matron didn't like it & also gave confused answers.

NHS worker here. Emergency care and hospital for a niche specialism. None of us have been fit tested yet, no clear guidelines on if we are turning patients away or seeing them still if they have high temp or cough...my boss has been desperately trying to get advice to no avail! So I'm taking temps at the door, giving hand gel at the door, giving advice!

This.

🤣🤣 into the abyss
If you don’t laugh you’d cry!

There is a video on how to remove and put on the PPE . Not watched it yet.

Sent out on email today.

Can I join, I work for an ambulance Trust. We are preparing, we have diverted normal non-operational staff to either work from home or become involved in Covid19 new roles to help assist for the expected increase in demand in the weeks ahead. We have many measures in place to protect our paramedics and patients and the situation is moving fast and being constantly changed.

I went into work yesterday to find our ward had been cleared of our normal patients and we were now the Coronavirus ward for the hospital, with no warning!
Had 3 swabbed but not confirmed patients as of yesterday so we'll see how things go over the weekend!

We are also taking temperatures when staff arrive each day.

We have constant updates and have meetings either over skype or spread out over the office rather than in a room all together. I feel they are taking all the steps they can to ensure we are operational and able to treat extra patients. There is no panic but everything has stepped up and we are all aware that things are rapidly evovling.

We are also taking temperatures when staff arrive each day

How hot do you have to be to get sent home? Any suggestion that any of us might actually catch it is being treated with mild amusement by my manager.

Frontline in a gp surgery none of our patients have been diagnosed with it yet. But have been one case in the area. We've stopped booking appts, stoping patients collecting prescriptions they are being sent EPS, packs for staff with masks in etc. Constantly hand washing and have about 5 botttles of hand sanitizers on the desk for us. The patients are using the new e-consult if they are able and then the gp is triaging them if they can deal over the phone or need to be seen but the past 2 days we've seen 4 patients come in for actual appts the rest have been dealt with over the phone. Luckily we've had no complaints apart from the odd moans but we are super lucky with our patients.

I'm thinking if/when it gets worse we will close the building but just have staff manning the phones and a gp in the building. Any cough or high whether travelled or not are being told to self isolate for 7 days.

37.8 and above

I'm frontline nhs staff in the biggest a&e in my country. I feel like I've shouting into the wind since December. I am really worried. Im sorry if this has been mentioned but my gp surgeries in my area have pretty much locked down.
Guess where all the panicked people who can't get in are going to go. We have had no guidance really. I'm on triage tomorrow in a tiny one door room. How many people are going to come in to see me with the virus putting me and my colleagues at risk. As it stands we only isolate them and don ppe if they show symptoms or are confirmed which will be to late. Also the ones who aren't symptomatic and are arriving with other ailments.
I feel like the public and government think we're superhuman. I have a daughter with severe asthma at home. The only thing they've implemented is to not wear uniform outside the hospital which most of us have always done anyway. I really don't know what to do. Sorry this is more of a rant I just feel the health board and government are really letting us down

I’m being hounded via email to carry on normal business.
People in the trust seemingly unaware of what we are furiously doing in the background to ready ourselves, that we are summoned to meetings up to 5 times a day, fighting to get ppe to keep or front line staff safe,
But 3 sometime 4 emails from various people about looking at a document that hasn’t been used for 4 years or more. Nothing to do with corona planning.
When I looked yesterday, I had 61 unread emails, accumulated over 2 days.

Of course I didn’t have time. Left them.

This has overshadowed and dominated every second of my working life for the last 2 weeks.
It’s unprecedented.

Described as standing on a beach watching a tsunami approaching with the inability to do anything to stop it.

I'm a GP practice nurse, we are doing our best to get prepared, at the moment it's the calm before the storm! Most appointments are switched to telephone only, we are making arrangements for clinical staff to work from home if they need to self isolate, and are trying to set up video appointments too. Face to face appointments can still go ahead if necessary but will be triaged over the phone by a GP before they are allowed in the building. We have an isolation room set up for suspected covid patients - which is any patient with respiratory symptoms as of yesterday. Electronic prescribing only.
More worrying is that all non urgent appointments are cancelled, this includes smear tests and chronic disease checks. I think we will be storing up lots of problems for the future here but we are doing what has been advised by PHE.

Name changed for this, and I am based in Scotland.

I work in acute medical, all our patients have been transferred to other wards and we have become the Covid-19 ward, although all cases so far unconfirmed.
Only 3 nurses have been face fitted, but that only happened yesterday even though the ward has been locked since Wednesday night.
Our PPE are the disposable droplet masks, apron and gloves, with the usual hand washing etc.
As we still have full staffing and very few patients, the managers have decided to move some of our staff to other wards for their shifts, even though all our staff have been in contact with the unconfirmed Covid patients and had originally been told that they could not be moved.
We get mixed messages every day and are just taking each day as it comes!

I just wanted to say thank you to all our front line staff who will be so worried and working flat out. I've been reading this thread with interest ( sons girlfriend is a nurse)
I just hope the trusts you work for appreciate all you do. Here's hoping it's not as bad as they think it might be ( if that makes any sense)
I'm grateful for having our NHS and for the people on the frontline.

We have been told that there aren’t enough masks for training or face fits. They don’t have enough of the ffp3 masks if a confirmed case comes in so they’re only to be worn for high risk procedures such as intubation. The rest of us get normal face masks. There also aren’t enough visors.

Essentially I’ve just been mentally preparing myself for the fact I’m sure I’ll get it at some point

A lot of confusion at our trust due to the new rule about only testing people after admission. We can’t use PPE on patients who are not confirmed. But NO ONE is going to be confirmed until after admission! So we will be looking after them without PPE for at least a day for all new admissions. Makes no sense.

@TakeANote DH says your trust guidance is wrong if that's what you are following
The guidance in the nhs.gov website gives full details on what the current protocols are
For suspected cases you should be using fluid resistant masks and regular ppe but don't need an ff3p mask for normal procedures unless doing an aerosol generating procedures at the moment.
Guidance is quite clear on this and on the website

The guidance in the nhs.gov website gives full details on what the current protocols are
For suspected cases you should be using fluid resistant masks and regular ppe but don't need an ff3p mask for normal procedures unless doing an aerosol generating procedures at the moment.
Guidance is quite clear on this and on the website

It's so obvious that the advice has changed due to lack of correct equipment. I checked the advice 2 weeks ago becasue I wanted to check we were prepared and back then it was ffp3 mask for all contact with CV patients. I brought this up with infection prevention because we didnt have the masks and they said they would try and get some... obviously now the advice has changed they dont need to bother.

We've been told apron/gloves/surgical mask/visor for triage of all respiratory patients and at our own discretion if we want to wear same PPE for all triage.

Latest advice for us was ffp3 mask/gown only for aerosol generating procedures (initially told nebulisers included but this was then withdrawn - airvo/nippv/cpap/intubation only). Only respiratory admissions being swabbed.

We had some proper, awful,disaster type scenarios put to us at work yesterday - very anxiety inducing. Also a lot of 'worried well' turning up/phoning.

Are there any Trusts or hospitals that require handgel? My friend’s company (Based in London with production capability in the midlands) produces cosmetics and toiletries. They have the capability and capacity to make hand gel. Private orders are beginning to flood in. They would really like to prioritise NHS though. They did tweet SOS at Dept. Heath yesterday! Anyway, I can PM the Company’s details if useful for any NHS teams.