Boris in ICU

[PicsInRed]

Oh Boris no 🙁

Absolutely no fan of Boris but hope he pulls through. The country needs continuity at the moment and his family have my sympathy.

Didn't take long for the special treatment posts to start 🙄

Our ITU is currently 1:1 for patients intubated . Other patients with less invasive forms of ventilation such as CPAP are also on ITU .

ICU at St Thomas's is absolutely fantastic. A close family member was in there for a number of weeks and definitely got 1:1 nursing.

casino218

Couldn’t he have had cpap in Downing Street? And would that warrant admission to ICU? Rather than HDU, I mean.

Couldn’t he have had cpap in Downing Street?

I'm not a medic but I'm sue that wouldn't be possible. Anyone on CPAP will need to be where the ventilation is available if they deteriorate.

The 1:6 ratio doesn’t mean 1 nurse for every 6 patients it means 1 ICU experienced trained nurse overseeing 6 other nurses who have been given basic training on looking after ICU patients. You can also be in ITU on non invasive ventilation - all those people you saw in Italy with their heads in plastic bubbles were on non invasive ventilation alongside intubated patients.

I truly hope he recovers from this.

People do have CPAP at home Poppinjay. For sleep apnoea and lung conditions. But that’s more a chronic issue.

The only thing I agree with that's been said on here regarding "special treatment" is that he's more likely to be seen by the consultant that a junior doctor (and yes I know that junior doctors are anyone under consultant level and are fantastic and experienced).
And I say this as someone who works for the NHS.
We are unbelievably lucky to have a world class health care system that treats "prince and pauper" alike.
It's so interesting to read all the posts about private healthcare, and that people don't realise that when the shit really hits the fan and you need ITU or trauma care, having private healthcare means zilch.

@TheHarryFormerlyKnownAsPrince CPAP at home a possible but for chronic conditions. In this situation, CPAP is just one of a myriad of treatments needed under the close monitoring of a critical care team, along with access to ventilation if he deteriorates. If he's in ITU, then that's where he needs to be.

Our manager has told us it will come to the point where we are overseeing non icu trained staff - odps, theatre nurses and anybody with icu experience however long ago, caring for 5 or 6 patients at a time. At the moment we are doubling up, so 1 nurse to 2 patients, preferably the most stable ones. We are having to acknowledge that our normally excellent standards of care will probably drop so 4 hourly turns or mouthcare instead of 2 etc
Our trust has actually discontinued electronic records temporarily because it’s so time consuming and we are back to paper work notes for some things.

Why wouldn’t he get 1:1 or preferential care, he is the PM. Of course there is some bias there - No one wants the PM to die. Although the country wouldn’t collapse it brings down some unity. People look to the PM for strength. Of course he himself is no more important than other people who are very sick.

No matter how much we don’t like it - he won’t be getting ‘different’ care but it might be better. More attention etc.

Anyone who thinks this isn’t true is a little
deluded.

People do have CPAP at home Poppinjay. For sleep apnoea and lung conditions. But that’s more a chronic issue.

Yes. Of course but those people are stable.

My husband has cpap at home so I was interested in this. If cpap was enough, couldn’t that have happened at no.10 with drs on call to provide 1:1 care at home. Presumably for security reasons they would have wanted to have kept him there as long as possible. As soon as he was moved, it made me think it was serious.

Of course he’s going to get better treatment than the average Joe bloggs

The idea that Boris will not be treated preferentially is crazy. He is clearly in intensive care long before others would be. In addition, I suspect that, were he to be intubated, it would be done by the consultant, not an overtired junior.

IN ICU in an NHS hospital he will receive exactly the care he needs. When they said he was in St Thomas's I wondered why he wasn't in a private hospital, but this explains why.

He will get better treatment but so would the leader of any country . Can you imagine Donald Trump not getting the best or Putin.

@littleren I totally agree. I’d be slightly worried if he wasn’t getting “better” treatment as he’s the leader of our country in a national emergency.

Thanks for clearing up the ICU 1:1 ratio. I thought it was in all London hospitals. Glad it’s not.

I agree with LittleRen also. I want him to have best chance of pulling through.

Home CPAP is for people who have generally sound breathing with a tendency to occlude/stop breathing for small periods of time. Critical care CPAP is for people who can't effectively breathe on their own - they may be exhausted from their illness, so their breaths are too shallow, or they may simply not have enough oxygen exchange going on if they have congested lungs.

The statistics for someone who needs ventilation outside of hospital are much worse than for patients who need it once they are in hospital. I wouldn't want to take that risk at all.

I’d be slightly worried if he wasn’t getting “better” treatment as he’s the leader of our country in a national emergency.

I would fully expect him to be looked after by more senior staff because they would be terrified of anyone making a mistake. There are also security considerations. However, he shouldn't be prioritised for an ICU bed or a ventilator, just because of his job. The same criteria should be applied to him as to other patients in a similar condition.

Some PP's don't seem to understand much about what an ICU is like, going on about private rooms etc.

Watch this.

It might help you understand it a bit better and make you understand why it would be far, far better not to be in a private ICU room (I don't even think they exist in any of the hospitals I know of).

Anyone who thinks this isn’t true is a little deluded.

Or perhaps they have just witnessed their own ‘joe bloggs’ family member receiving world class intensive care at the hands of the NHS?

If I were a billionaire I couldn’t have bought better care than my 6 year old received when a virus put her in PICU in 2018, and she certainly didn’t have a country to run, seeing as she was still in infant school!

It is quite shocking that the PM is so ill, yes, but I don't think that people saying lets not deify him are saying they wish him dead!

As for the absolute outrage at the suggestion that everyone gets the exact same care in HDU/ICU..that may be so-the critically ill levels of care are very good in the NHS. The trouble is, people who are not VIP and are on general wards are often made much iller and end up dead because of the total lack of care on those wards.
I lost a family member this way, and was nearly killed by incompetence myself on a general ward. Just read the post natal threads on here to see a picture of hospitals failing to provide proper care. Somebody like the PM would never experience the frightening reality of the state of hospitals BEFORE you get to HDU/ICU.
So, yes, ICU is amazing care, but honestly I would do anything to avoid a general NHS ward.
And before anyone starts NO this is not bashing nurses, just pointing out that the system is frighteningly rickety and understaffed when you are just a general patient.
Anyway, I am wondering whether the staff looking after him have adequate PPE. I hope so.