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.

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.

Very selfish point of view. Just let the elderly and those with pre existing conditions die then? So people can go back to work?

Take a look in the mirror.

SarahInAccounts

I take your point but what is your solution? We can't stay in lockdown until a vaccine is found.

Lock down should continue indefinitely.

Workplaces should find ways to go back while observing social distancing then a gradual return to work for places where social distancing can be observed. The rest have to remain closed.

I will probably die if I get it. I don't want to. You don't get to play Russian roulette with my life or the lives of others.

There’s only one message I would want to see coming from this thread.

Earlier admission.

Too much disinformation swilling around at the moment, including fake Twitter accounts pushing herd immunity made to look like they are genuine NHS staff. This has become a highly political topic.

For example, back in March the OP was saying:

“I worry more about this going on for months and months, and the deaths that will follow from another 10 years of austerity, than the deaths that will ensue in mostly people of old age if we let this thing take hold.“

They have pretty firm views on this topic.

It might be that all of these reports are all absolutely accurate.

It might be that some are accurate, but are being amplified by people who want the idea to take hold and public mood to change in favour of ending lockdown early.

Ultimately usual internet caution should apply to everything you read on here. You don’t know who is posting or what their motivation is.

Figures from France that are easily available ( i find it difficult to find many statsitics in the uk) show that they have many more in hosptial. Currently 30,000 and this number has gone down.They nearly reached capacity, however only 17,000 today in hosptial in the uk. On the face of it this would seem like a good thing but i am starting to think that people arent in hosptial soon enough. France has significantly fewer hospital deaths than the uk and are furthur along. This has been bothering a lot.

Fraser Nelson in the Telegraph touched on this on the 16th in this article, but it was framed in the headline as an ‘exit strategy’ issue & I think this stock phrase doing the rounds is probably pretty unhelpful. Can someone Tweet him & other more sober non-Piers Morgan media types? This situation is utterly absurd!

Bluegrass yep.

It’s easy to jump in this and push an agenda.

Very Elderly people in hospital are routinely given DNR forms : none of this is new.
When my dad ( 97 at the time) went back to his care home after a night in hospital last year they were concerned it wasn't in his red bag ! It was very quickly chased up!
He wouldn't be offered any treatment if he were to be a victim of this disease. I'm aware of this and know the reasons why. It's not always easy to swallow of course but it's also part of life. I'm sad that much younger fitter people are dying or not getting treatment. That's not good at all.

I work in an interventional area. I can't see when we can possibly get back to anything like normal productivity because everything is taking three times as long now. Every day procedures which are now declared to be AGP (aerosol generating) and therefore have to be treated as potentially infectious. The procedure room is cleared of anything removable (equipment we usually have hanging ready to hand on the back wall is now stored in the clean stock room which is jam packed with boxes and it takes twice as long to get what you want shifting boxes out of the way to get to another) we have to assemble every last item we might need, including things like spare sterile gloves just incase, standard stuff is in the room, expensive stuff is outside the room and we have to knock for the clean runner to hand in what we need (anything left over has to be binned). Getting all the PPE on and working in it is time consuming, the masks mean anyone like me and some of the Drs who wear multifocal glasses have our glasses slightly displaced affecting vision plus the goggles and head visor make it worse so we are peering at the x ray display or ultrasound. When it's all done we queue to correctly remove the kit with much much spraying alcohol gel at stages in the removal and hand washing and help from a doffing assistant. The room has to be left for a period of time for the air to settle before it can be cleaned (initially this was an hour but now they are checking the air filtration rates in theatres etc to see if this can be reduced to twenty minutes). Then a major clean. Then do it all again.

We did two procedures one afternoon last week which normally have a one hour turn around and we'd have time for one or two other procedures. It took all afternoon and we finished an hour late.

Incidentally a pp mentioned laparoscopic/keyhole procedures in theatre - these are deemed AGP and are being kept to a minimum. Eg appendix operations are now being done by open abdominal method instead of keyhole/laparoscopic. It's a new learning curve for the doctors who aren't used to doing it that way. Also taking longer. Plus longer recovery time for patients.

On the plus side our hospital is trying to maintain cancer services as much as possible, all breast surgery is at one of the local private hospitals and the oncology ward and day case chemo has transferred to the other local private hospital. Maybe they are still under capacity but they aren't being left unused. It's a good news story and I don't know why the hospital is being a bit cloak and dagger secret about it instead of making an announcement and reassuring patients.

Also re A&E - all respiratory cases are admitted at the other side of the hospital direct into an assessment ward. A&E is as safe as a visit to the supermarket imo , probably safer due to the constant cleaning and precautions. I look at the A&E admissions and wonder where the hell all the regular admissions are. Don't be afraid to go if you need to - there won't be a queue!

This is good on one hand, means we shut down early enough to cope. I do think we should have still been treating some more people in other areas though no point having doctors and nurses hanging around not doing anything.

But my understanding was that they where using post op and theatre space for ventilator rooms in some hospitals making operations not possible? Maybe this isn't the case everywhere.

But as we open up we will see more cases, we may have to cope with this level or higher ontop off the flu season. This isn't going away, we may still need these extra facilities we've built.

France has significantly fewer hospital deaths than the uk and are furthur along. This has been bothering a lot

Me too. Why have the clinical outcomes for the UK been looking so much worse than Germany, France etc? But if the threshold for UK hospital admission with Covid-19 are so high (unless you’re the PM & it’s ’precautionary’) then it starts to make sense.

I can understand the desire not to see the NHS swamped, but this early overcompensation is going to produce (hell, is producing) the very catastrophe that the government was hoping to avoid in the first place!

SarahInAccounts

There isn't the money for that. It isn't possible. It will not happen.

I wasn't aware of any age group nor of any comorbidity that will "probably" die. The chances of surviving it than not are greater for all groups.

What about all the deaths from other conditions which will occur as a result of indefinite lockdown? What about increased suicide? What about increased domestic violence? Or do only covid deaths matter?

Bluegrass

Well said.

Completely agree

WTF is the point of a health service if it doesn't treat people who are at risk of death??

@DippyAvocado

That is an excellent question. Some of the personal accounts on this thread of people who are seriously ill being actively prevented from going to hospital? It is really shocking. Once again, there is an almost surreal reversal in place. The job of the NHS is to care for people who are ill. The message here seems to be they should die at home quietly to protect the NHS. It is deranged.

Did you know that a health ministry employee has been caught setting up fake social media accounts that are supposedly doctors and nurses who are calling for lockdown to be lifted?

I’ll find the article. It seems some factions of the government are tired of lockdown and are trying to pretend that NHS workers want it to be over to gain public support.

I have five NHS workers in my family. The ones in hospital do agree that it is quiet but absolutely like it that way because it means the patients get the care they need.

The ones in the ambulance service are having the worst time because they are being told to leave patients at home to die who could be saved to keep the strain off the hospitals who are struggling. This is I. The Midlands.

@noraclavicle thank you, i feel like i am going slighly mad at the moment and at the government. The hosptial numbers in France did not come down nearly as early as they have in the uk. They only started coming down a day or so ago. It really does not make sense to me what is going on with the figures in the uk.

#FannyCan I used to work in classroom industry you can easily have ventilation that will clear a room in minites. Weather your current kit it up to it or you'd need better pumps I don't know. But getting your gyes to speck to industry experts who install high class clean rooms would be a good option. They have higher requirements then a theatre.

It’s actually a Twitter thread. But an interesting read.

mobile.twitter.com/jdpoc/status/1252266724449230848

I’d be careful of some people on here claiming to be working in hospitals.

On god, this is an interesting side to it all. Twiddling thumbs while treatments are not being done is really upsetting

Belle yes there’s a sense of that type of misinformation on this thread.

Sigh. If this is true, it is one reason of many that I think the lockdown going on much longer might be doing much more harm than good.

Lock down should continue indefinitely. Workplaces should find ways to go back while observing social distancing then a gradual return to work for places where social distancing can be observed.

How can you continue lockdown indefinitely WHILE allowing workplaces to open up? I think you do not understand the meaning of the word "lockdown."

I'm confused now what to think!
Lots of people do want lockdown ended.
Lots of experts have many different views.

I had never thought of the tagline as a PP mentioned about being the wrong way round, us protecting the health service rather than it protecting us (which is it's job). Actually very interesting point.