What is the point of the Nightingale hospital

[Eastie77]

Reading this evening (Guardian, Independent) that the Nightingale hospital in East London has just 30 patients. Doctors and nurses working in over-stretched hospitals are saying the facility is failing to take any seriously ill patients and they cannot access vital pieces of medical equipment including ventilators and PPE which have been earmarked for the Nightingale but are sitting around unused

A lot of senior clinicians seem to think the whole project has been a pointless political exercise and I can see their point of view.
Since the Chief Medical Officer has said today we are 'probably' reaching our peak and the Nightingale is virtually empty doesn't it make sense to just close it and redeploy all of that vital equipment??

So it is clear we do not have enough medical staff.”

There are plenty of staff. Lots of departments have staff that arent doing anything. Some will be or have been redeployed, but not all because they need to keep the departments open.

Also posters saying operations and treatments have been "cancelled" or "stopped" don't seem to read past headlines. They have not been cancelled, they have been postponed

People are talking about individuals. My dp was due a scan 4 weeks ago. He has been having them every 4 weeks to monitor a problem, that isnt dangerous in itself, but if it gets worse then it could cause fluid on his brain to build up. If it getting worse he will needs big operation.

He is due one tomorrow and his last one was cancelled. Not postponed. Postponed means it will happen eventually. He has missed 2. They arent going to to them all at a later date.

Yesterday I spoke to the department who was mean to fit his specialist hearing aid. They are all there. The consultants are still there with nothing to do, but cant bring him in because it's not essential.

We understand why these things are happening but its worrying and things are definitely being cancelled.

As for nightingale, you can guarantee that if they hadnt done it and cases got worse, the government would have been ripped apart for not doing something like it.

We may have peaked. But that doesnt mean it's over. There potential for a 2nd wave. At some point, they may decide to not treat covid at all in hospitals to get those back to normal.

It gives us options and a back up plan.

As pp said, everyone wasnt meant to comply with lock down. It worked too well. There will be a second wave. We just have to see if they can control it.

Isn’t it a good thing if these hospitals are created and not needed? Prepare for the worst and then work your arse off to make sure it’s not needed?

Very interesting reading @LilacTree1.

There is expected to be catastrophic need as we move into the next flu season. COVID + flu + regular winter ills = system driven to the brink.

Off-topic but @JustStayHome

I spoke to my consultant last week , im shielding, if i was to get it, as soon as i get symptoms, don't wait, ring 111 and explain why I'm shielding

Just to let you know my experience I am shielding and developed COVID-19. I called 111 after 3 days of symptoms and was on hold for nearly 4 hours only to be told “self-isolate and get advice from your own medical provider”. So I wouldn’t bother with 111 if I were you. In my case, I tried to get hold of my consultant (no luck) but then got hold of my GP who told me to call 999. I called 999 and was told there were no ambulances and to make my own way to hospital if I could. I ended up walking to hospital where they did an ECG etc and said only come back if you have severe chest pains or severely laboured breathing and make sure you go through 111. There was no early treatment and no testing available. It seemed that it had been utterly pointless to be told to seek medical help ASAP as they weren’t interested unless you met the same criteria for admission as anyone else.

It's been a pointless political exercise. Grandstanding at its finest.

Right. So we seem to be reaching our peak and it looks like we could have managed without it. Thank God.

But what would have been said if it had been desperately needed and didn’t exist? The government can’t do right for doing wrong, can they?

Now we have the Nightingales, they might be able to start sending all Covid patients there, keeping our main ones 'clean' so they can resume full normal duties?

Personally I'd be delighted if they stayed empty. Much better to have them empty than full.

It’s great news if it ends up being barely used. I think the general plan will be that ultimately corona patients will go more to the nightingales so that hospitals will be able to begin to focus on their usual workload as the system will fall over if they can’t pick that work back up again at some point.

It would make sense to ship patients to the purposely built hospital and keep certain hospitals running for other illness! Keep coronavirus as confined to one place as possible.

The lack of help for people is terrible. I've had a friend this week hospitalised with it. Went through 10 days of fevers, dry cough, tight chest and fatigue. Turned into pnunomia. The paramedics came out and said she was fine. 24 hours later she drove to a&e where they discovered she had low oxygen and fluid all on her lungs. They had been fobbing her off for at least 3-4'days. They are leaving you at home because they don't want you in hospital or near them. They are just hoping you don't die. Leaving people telling you they can't breathe is disgusting.

I'm terrified of getting this virus for that exact reason. Getting the help you need!

It'll be needed when lockdown ends and it starts to spread again. The whole point of the lockdown is to buy time to get resources into place to cope when huge numbers of people catch it, which is inevitable as we can't stay locked down until the vaccine. The Nightingales will be full in a few months time.

Utterly ridiculous.

Boris and co are so ignorant they don't realise that hospitals aren't just big buildings with lots of beds in them.

Ruffle And if they had the people without the hospitals, others would complain what's the point of having the staff if you have no beds...

Boris and co are so ignorant they don't realise that hospitals aren't just big buildings with lots of beds in them

Isn't it rather ignorant to not realise that they might be big buildings with no free space in them....?

Insurance policy. It worked in other democratic countries.
If they don't need them, that's brilliant. Like any other insurance policy.
Amazing there are so many untapped resources of civil contingency planning on this thread that can predict what we do and don't need and when we need it.

It was an insurance policy. You don’t kick yourself when you get back from holiday because you didn’t use your holiday insurance by something going wrong... we may be over the peak of this wave but we are in this for the long haul.

This

Our government have arranged for one to be build here (jersey) at a cost of £14m

180 extra beds I think. And we’re having a new mortuary (morbid...) built somewhere too.

In our existing hospital we have 7 icu beds. We have a population of 150,000 ish.

We are all hoping that our gov have wasted money on this but sadly I don’t think this will be the case. By using it I think it’ll free up our normal hospital for other patients

Can anyone explain why people are being “left to die” in care homes? I have no experience of the care home system. If a resident gets ill normally does a doctor or nurse come out to see them? What is happening at the moment?

I work in a London hospital. All outpatient staff were moved to the frontline and all non essential work put on hold. Some cancer treatments have been held (for clinical and capacity reasons). Some of it is patients declining to come in as scared of infection.

Apart from ITU which has become huge (triple size) and busy >90% full, all the other wards are half empty or empty. There was initially a lot of staff off through shielding, covid symptoms or self isolation (we had no access to testing). Now a lot of those staff can return, the inpatient staff are falling over selves. ITU is now having to take patients from other hospital ITUs, so I’m not sure what the purpose of Nightingale is. God knows how we were meant to staff it, if all our wards had been full and staff sickness as it was we wouldn’t have had ‘spare’ staff to send to it.

I read those big hospitals were for less complex cases and the complex ones would stay in the usual hospitals. So maybe it is the case more admissions are complex?

On the issue of the vulnerable / shielding, DH is on multiple auto immune meds and he got sick a while back after the Fen half term, I think we had this but they wouldn't test as were in France not Italy (at the time that was the criteria)

I rang the GP who rang back within 10 mins and talked to him, he was very ill but managing to breathe ok but was e.g. coughing up blood so very unwell, he prescribed some antibiotics in case of a bacterial infection on top, and it went to the pharmacy via email where I collected it and he did improve. So I'm still unsure if it was COVID but he had some odd symptoms he'd not usually get with a chest infection such as vomiting. Plus we had been abroad.

So anyway GP was quite helpful in that situation as they know of your other conditions etc

To be clear I am not criticising the government for building the Nightingale in the first place. No one knew exactly how this epidemic would pan out or precisely what the peak will look like and I am not condemning the government for planning ahead.

I am just commenting on the situation we are in right now where senior clinicians are desperately crying out for life saving equipment that is currently sitting around unused in the Nightingale. Doctors are desperately trying to treat and save lives with limited resources whilst a huge building containing those very resources sits idle. I do not understand the logic behind this.

The Trust where l work has cancelled elective surgery but cancer surgery is still going ahead but has been moved to the local private hospital.

I do feel that people are being left at home and not being admitted until it is too late for them. I wonder how many people have died, who under normal circumstances would have been admitted and given medical attention just because the Threshold for treatment has been raised.

Nightingale hospitals are a great concept but if they don't have the staff, equipment or PPE then they are pointless and can't be utilized. Hopefully the Government can resolve that issue and then more people can be saved who otherwise would have been left.

If a resident gets ill normally does a doctor or nurse come out to see them? What is happening at the moment?

They're staying behind closed doors in their surgery, just doing phone consultations.

The lack of help for people is terrible. I've had a friend this week hospitalised with it. Went through 10 days of fevers, dry cough, tight chest and fatigue. Turned into pnunomia. The paramedics came out and said she was fine. 24 hours later she drove to a&e where they discovered she had low oxygen and fluid all on her lungs. They had been fobbing her off for at least 3-4'days

What utter rubbish!
I saw the treatment and very early intervention Johnson got and he got the treatment EVERYONE else would get.....surely???? mmmmmmm

I would ask anyone who thinks these hospitals are soooooo great, why the UK death rate is 13% per 100 patients in care and in Germany 2.5% per 100.
So with unused 4000 extra beds in London, why aren't patients getting the early treatment which German patients get?
Perhaps the reason is that that this hospital isn't actually functioning or the authorities don't care? there is zero reason to have 1000s of empty beds and the story told by @Lexijayde44

I am just commenting on the situation we are in right now where senior clinicians are desperately crying out for life saving equipment that is currently sitting around unused in the Nightingale. Doctors are desperately trying to treat and save lives with limited resources whilst a huge building containing those very resources sits idle. I do not understand the logic behind this.

In what hospital are these doctors?

I'm sorry @SoupDragon you've lost me . Are you saying 'no free space' is a design feature of the nightingalr hospitals?!

Perhaps you misunderstood what i was saying. To clarify: this government hasn't provided new hospitals. It has provides big buildings with lots of beds, very few staff and very little in the way of equipment.