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.

BovaryX: "I am not in the UK"

So why are you so bothered by the NHS?

I know some Americans hate the existence of the NHS, as they're afraid of the way it shows up their much more expensive system which leads to worse outcomes on a lot scales (life expectancy, infant mortality, to name but two).

(This is different from Brits being the "critical friend" of the NHS, as BubblesBuddy describes, which is absolutely essential to any good system.)

But you don't say which country you're in.

Yes but by protecting the NHS we can save more lives because then they have more capacity to treat the sickest people, if we had all been merrily going about as normal for the last 4 weeks this thread would be very very different.

And yes, as frumpety says, "Protect the NHS" is a slogan from this particular Tory government.

Have you seen the thread where the woman's 9 year old son was told by 999 that they wouldn't send an ambulance until she was basically dead? Sounds like the official stats on deaths are being kept as low as possible - deaths en route or at home don't get counted. Something is going very wrong and it goes all the way to the top. It's all very well to say "come in" but if you're on your own or on your own with kids that's impossible.

@Chipmonkeypoopoo I think it was you who asked if lots of the hospitals are quiet why do NHS staff think our death toll has been high?
There will be a few factors involved in that. Dh (and most of his other medical colleagues) all believe that our Government acted too slowly. That we should have listened to WHO and tested earlier and much more widely, that we should have been social distancing and discouraging mass gatherings at least 2-3 weeks before we did. That’s not hindsight it’s what lots of medical professionals were saying at the time. Our slow reaction almost certainly lost lives. The lack of testing for NHS staff will also have contributed to the spread within the hospitals, infecting already sick patients.

Now they are also beginning to question the late stages at which patients are presenting - as in how poorly they are. Basically are we leaving patients at home too long before commencing oxygen therapy. Could earlier treatment and support have made a difference? There will be no answers on that for quite a while yet though.

Thank you very much for starting this thread, @QuietHospital

I've had internal tests cancelled that aren't until October; my GP and hospital consultant have both said if I don't have these tests soon and my diagnosis is anymore delayed, it could lead to lifelong damage and probable bowel incontinence. I'm 34. I spoke to the hospital yesterday and the likelihood is my tests will be post feb 2021. My first appt for this was last April, so I would have waited 2 years for the first test for my condition. The reason was that all non urgent wards (colorectal in this case) had been closed and the doctors redeployed to covid wards. I'm more angry than I was when I got my cancellation letter to read this thread!

Missy good points. I hope they don’t react too slowly over last one.

@BubblesBuddy

Carl Heneghan may be an Oxford professor, but I have access to the same data he has.

I just looked up the gap between China imposing lockdown, and it's date of maximum deaths. And lo and behold, it is almost precisely the same gap as between our closing schools and our date of maximum deaths.

China - lockdown 23/1/20 peak deaths 14/2/20 lag = 22 days
UK - schools close 20/3/20 peak deaths 8/3/20 lag = 19 days

Given that I have taken reported peak deaths for China, and, like us, their actual date of peak deaths will have been slightly earlier, then I think it is pretty comparable.

So, if it was handwashing that caused the reduction in the UK, why did it occur at a very similar time interval to China's lockdown? Or was it something other than lockdown that caused their decrease?

This is a very simple thing to look up. I often think that academics want their moment of fame and publish controversial studies just to show what they can do with data and make a name for themselves as being a bit "edgy".

We would, of course, have been protecting the NHS and its ability to protect us, by funding it better over the last decades. Like by not voting down nurses' payrises, not removing training bursaries and not introducing backdoor cuts by giving the NHS additional responsibilities without additional funding.

So for a Tory government to run this as a slogan... It's annoying me as much as Tory politicians clapping.

@PerkingFaintly 100% agree.

111 has never been fit for purpose. It’s a cost saving measure, to stick Sharon in front of a screen with three weeks basic training. Another “protect the nhs” initiative.

I've used 111 several times but it's so limited, with the set of questions that usually bear no relevance to what you call for.
Among the scripted questions are is the patient conscious, and are they breathing? If someone had stopped breathing i would have called 999 for immediate help, not called 111 to answer a list of 10 questions!!
My DD had an ear infection in early March, that presented overnight on saturday, so couldnt call GP. It took about 10 min to get through all the covid 19 instructions (which were not applicable as she had none of the symptoms) then go through all the questions (again most, if not all, were irrelevant) before them saying a dr could call back.

Nellodee yes I agree. Statements such as his should be investigated further. Also if as he states it worked everywhere bar London then our rate of death is even worse than we thought against others, eg Germany.

It's the same here my friend says, never seen the hospital so quiet. All the covid patients that have died were life limited already according to her. They have restarted elective surgery this week.

Germany are dealing with this better not just because they had more hospital beds and are admitting Covid+patients earlier for oxygen treatment but also are putting more staff to work in the community, sending them to people's homes to test them and admit them when needed. Of course they have no shortage of PPE and testing ability.

We seem to have a system that is ensuring more people die of Covid-19 AND other serious conditions. It would appear we've cleared the hospitals of regular business partly to maintain social distancing and still the spread of covid-19, and to ensure capacity and adequate staff to deal with the anticipated influx of Covid+ patients. But, over zealous gatekeeping by 111 and 999, andc too high a threshold for admittance to hospital with breathing problems, means that extra capacity is not being used. This is a travesty and likely causing two lots of uneccesary deaths Covid+ and others in need of emetgency medical care.

Who would be the organisation which applies the joined-up thinking to make 111 more responsive to getting struggli g covid+ patients into hospital when and where there is capacity?

Are such decisions made nationally or locally? Are decisions being made using over-populated. Densely populated London as the model? I live in a town in a rural county with just over 100 deaths. I can imagine our hospitals have a huge amount of capacity at the moment. I don't want anyone I know to be denied early oxygen if they can't breath just because in some parts of the country some hospitals are over-run

111 has never been fit for purpose. It’s a cost saving measure, yes and even less so atm.

I'm not a HCP, but I am a local elected representative so I am aware of our healthcare situation. Our local hospital (Yorkshire) has Covid cases but is under capacity in ICU. The rest of the hospital is a ghost town.

But we have a number of cases of people who have attended A&E for accident related issues and have then contracted Covid in the hospital. We've had one case of death in these circumstances (someone has gone into hospital for another reason, caught covid there and died of it).

This is a very real issue with extraordinary implications for many people who may need surgical or medical interventions. No-one needs to be dealing with covid if they have just had surgery, or broken a bone, or are dealing with chemo treatment

Our general hospital has had to close several medical wards because there just aren't enough patients to keep them open. We have far too many doctors and nurses for the number of patients we have - 1 doctor for every three patients which is a ridiculous ratio. Nobody knows where the heart attacks, strokes etc are if they aren't presenting to hospital. All very worrying

111 has never been fit for purpose. It’s a cost saving measure, to stick Sharon in front of a screen with three weeks basic training. Another “protect the nhs” initiative.

Not just NHS though is it? Gordon Brown closed down most local tax offices and made huge numbers of experienced tax inspectors redundant. Then filled call centres with low skilled call handlers who had the same few weeks of basic tax training. And we've seen how that turned out too with the enormous numbers of mistakes etc.

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/18/uk-care-home-covid-19-deaths-may-be-five-times-government-estimate People are dying on care homes, that’s why there’s no one in the hospitals. The government proved they don’t care about old people when they got up and basically said “wash your hands and granny might die but oh well.”

Yep, I work in a stroke ward and I'm mainly worried about where all my patients who would normally present with stroke symptoms are? I'm fearful that people are to scared to come into hospital and trying to manage at home somehow. I'm concerned that some patients who have had strokes are presenting in a&e to late. I'm concerned for all my outpatients who are being forced to miss important appointments.
As for all these 'they wouldn't come and see me unless I was blue' posts, to put it simply I don't believe them.

fascinating discussion! This is going to need a thread 2.

When the broadcasts networks are serving up a high saccharine low nutrient diet you have to turn to mumsnet!

The thing is, primary care have been brainwashed into believing the only thing the nhs is treating is covid.

111 “triage” is indefensible.

GP’s are locked door, video services for all but critical functions and with the greatest respect a video can’t do a proper assessment for a lot of cases. My 3 year old daughter has had a video assessment because she’s clearly got a chest infection (for about 5 weeks) and they just say, keep up inhalers (which we cannot get because they are unavailable) and if she goes blue call 999. My own asthma is awful (probably pollen) and they have said I cannot be reviewed, so I doubled my preventer as per my asthma plan and they stopped my prescriptions because I’m ordering more than normal and “might be stockpiling”. 🤷‍♀️

I work in mental health and the wards are busy, all full of covid but because they are hospitals 111 consider them to access to medical care.

The Care Homes we work with are absolutely drowning in no PPE, staff off and death. Not news hype, my own experience.

I’ve noticed A&E is the Q word when I go there with work and decided if we get ill, I’m just going to use judgement and turn up there.

I think the Italian and Spanish hospitals were drowning because they tried to help people appropriately. We are just letting them die at home/in care to avoid them appearing in the daily stats.

In fact the article that BovaryX links about cancer survival in the UK puts the blame for our lower (but improving) rates on staff shortages impeding treatment...

All these nurses who have come back from retirement or came from clinics, the student nurses too have nowhere to go.

Also we have a wave of final year medical students who were graduated early and are due to join the workforce next month. There is nothing for them to do, and physically we don't know where to put them as with more staff sitting around it just increases the infection risk