The hospital I work in is so quiet

[QuietHospital]

London hospital.
Half empty. Some wards have less than a handful of patients, some wards are closed. Most staff have been moved to wards so are falling over selves. While their regular work goes undone.
A&E very quiet. I’ve sent patients there who are seen immediately. The heart attacks, strokes and appendicitis cases are presenting too late. People with covid are waiting too long to present. If you get breathless then for goodness sake come in. I’m so cross at the initial advice to stay home until struggling.
Had a look through covid ward lists and vast majority patients are aged over 70. Hardly any patients under 60, those who are have underlying health problems for the most part. Lots more men than women affected.
It’s just a snapshot but echoed by colleagues in other hospitals.
I think we can / should start to move back to normal life soon for the well young people among us. I fear for the short and longer term economic hit. It’s crazy to have all these young well people furloughed or made redundant.

Exactly. I thought the point of all this ruining of businesses was to ensure the hospitals weren’t overwhelmed and we could still get help. I’m so angry about how this shitty government has handled everything. We’ve got the showboating Nightingale hospitals but no fucking testing or PPE or anything actually useful.

It's not even that bad in the US! People are going to New York hospitals and there are hardly any people there.
Yes the media will not report it but when was the media ever reliable? They constantly lie.
I'm glad you started this thread OP. People need to wake up.
My family have been going to antenatal appointments in the hospital and my aunty also went for blurred vision in a very heavily populated area in London and the A&E was completely empty.

And the vulnerable should have been taken care of whilst the rest of the people work as we are going to see very bad times. Nor everyone is being furloughed. Poverty will be on the increase. It's already happening everywhere.

I think the Nightingale hospitals were always a worst case scenario and I for one will be delighted if they don’t have to be used.

Thanks for sharing op. I have 2 nurse friends (west mids hospital) one works in respiratory ward and they have both said the same.

I read a report that in Germany they have regular updates showing ICU capacity on a graph.

This means people can tell for themselves whether there's capacity in the system. Which helps either encourage people to call for treatment before they're blue in the face or gives motivation to follow lockdown rules when the system really is strained.

I think this whole thing needs regional comms that change according to local risk.

Plus new political leadership but I'm not holding out hope for that. When you hear Blair, Brown or Major talking about this you realise how lightweight the current leadership is.

I work within neonates.
Even that is quieter than normal.

Best friend. Doctor doing all her shifts on covid wards
Unbelievably quiet she says. Not even a fraction of the covid patients they imagined.
Thus is a very large urban hospital

@ludicrouslemons here in Greece we all know how many ICU beds we have. Every evening at 6pm our MoH spokesperson tells the country how many new cases we have, how many are in ICU, how many of them are on ventilators, how many have recovered from the ICU and how many have sadly died. Turns out you don't have to be a wealthy superpower to have some semblance of control in this situation, you just need to have a transparent government with some sense. And empathy.

My worry is autumn winter when we are already rammed yearly and covid is around too. Normal life continues without lockdown but the NHS could well be swamped then.

And just to add we are well under capacity in our (frankly dismally low) ICU beds.

If everyone is staying at home what is community nursing like? Is that much busier with the more acute at home and in care homes?

Same here (North West). Big city centre hospitals are really quiet.

I don't know if it's been said, but part of the vast clearing out / cancelling was a fear that staff would be decimated by illness / self-isolating, so there would be no-one to look after the patients (rather than just being overwhelmed by Covid cases per se). That hasn't happened, which is good obviously.

Another part was the senior leadership team whipping themselves up into a bit of a frenzy and buying into the military hero fantasy ("gold command" fnarr) which is looking a bit unnecessary now - agree with the sunk costs fallacy.

Consultants have been sent away to work from home half the time as we're not even needed! Completely unprecedented. We are very busy usually. Hardworking ward staff who are usually rushed off their feet are sitting around sharing out donated donuts, pizza and hand cream.

On the positive side, it has shown us that (in some specialties) things can be done differently, such as quicker discharges. The way things have always been done is being questioned which is a rare opportunity in the NHS.

So when will the backlog of patients who have had their operations etc postponed be treated? If the plan is to ease lockdown over the summer which will result in a rise in covid cases I can't see them being treated then. Similiarly it does not seem sensible to postpone until next winter when we might see a second peak plus all the usual flu cases. I suspect we will see excess mortality remain high until there is a vaccine. There does not seem to be much thought going in to capacity over the medium term.

I live alone, fell and knocked myself out, bleeding head etc... last week.

Paramedics didn’t bring me in because I have T2 diabetes in remission. They would have five do normally, so they are also contributing to hospitals being quieter as they are not bringing the patients they would normally do

The NHS can’t sacrifice multiple healthy people to save one sick person

But it wouldn't be, because in most cases it is a mild illness which won't kill you

I felt ill a week ago (not CV) i talked to a doctor online and 111 who both advised me to go into a and e. I was reluctant but went with encouragement from the 111 nurse.

It was empty! I got seen straight away. Given the all clear, medication and was on my way. It was great!

So not all areas of the country are acting manic.

Thanks for posting OP. I work in primary care and deal with hospital referrals. All routine and some urgent referrals are cancelled, including some for suspected cancer. We’ve been told to re-refer everyone when this is over but the list is getting longer and longer. How are hospitals going to cope then?

I agree, we need to start lifting restrictions before it’s too late.

Trump doesn't often say anything of any value, but saying the cure can not be worse than the disease runs true. Friend is a cardiologist. She says loads of people are not presenting for either worrying they won't be seen or fear of the virus. She is convinced the resultant deaths from all the conditions not being treated will eventually be far worse than those that actually die from CV, and that's not taking account of the stats that 2/3 of CV patients would have died within months or died with it not because of it

Watching Sweden and their death rate...they are still treating other non Covid conditions far more than us.

When the economy is bankrupt and far more resultant deaths I fear the benefit of hindsight will show we have made some massive mistakes with handling this

I guess we had to prepare for the worst case scenario to make sure hospitals could cope, I'd rather we overreacted rather than under. I think the problem is the public are thinking hospitals are overwhelmed and not wanting to put pressure on unless actually dying. I'm recovering very slowly from covid19 but three weeks ago I was the most Ill i have ever been in my life, in normal circumstances I would have gone to a&e on multiple occasions (and I've never been to a&e in my life not even with bad asthma attacks) as I just felt so awful and was so breathless but I was really worried about going if it wasn't critical that I just stayed at home and tried to cope.

Has anyone used this app which shows waiting times at a&e? It is only available in 3 areas but seems like a good idea
www.nhs.uk/apps-library/waitless/

So how come thousands are dying every day and the hospitals are empty?? My cousin said the same thing about her MH department as they just cancelled everything and theres no work for all thr doctors and nurses to do - she said it is boring to sit on their bums all day! Its like WTF? But you are still told not to go to hospital until you turn blue? Is this a moden genocide?

Thanks for sharing @QuietHospital however I’m not sure that this is the case everywhere in London. I had to call an ambulance for a friend with I would say Covid symptoms even if the GP said it wasn’t. The ambulance didn’t come, I’m so glad that they recovered because it looked scarily like they wouldn’t.

Just as quiet in general practice. I went home early last week. Unheard of. Covid rooms set up standing unused. Yet most of our routine work and screening all cancelled. There will be a huge influx of patients needing to be seen and staff with a lot of unused holiday to take after all this.

If the government use this quiet hospital idea to lift lock down early the amount of people who die at home without care will worsen.

I agree with pp re 111 triaging too severely. And with Flax re not due to political will but wrong level of severity being set.