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.

The current 111 policy is an absolute scandal

I imagine the 111 admissions criteria were set around a month ago based on the scenes from Italy. Do not give an inch to anyone unless they have phoned more than 5 times and are practically dead. The criteria haven’t been updated to fit the current scenario in hospitals today, and joined up thinking with hospital wards is lagging behind.

It’s also possible I suppose that people dying quietly at home and not being part of the statistics probably suits the narrative. Especially if elderly and economically inactive.

@Toddlerteaplease the NHS isn’t coping. There is now going to be 3 month delay for those seeking seeking treatment,,,,,, already on top of the huge wait lists and huge refusal of service.

We used 111 weeks ago for asthmatic ds2 and it took about a day for him to speak to a GP and be prescribed some meds. They were fab , but his cough was worrying me : just told to isolate. I'm not knocking it but if he had got any worse I would have taken him to a and e myself : luckily he was ok in the end. It's scary if people are being turned away when they should be in hospital.

@Hotcuppatea I hope you can alert your friends husband to this thread! I’m truly disgusted that essential operations and appointments are being cancelled whilst some of our hospitals are sat half empty. Something very amiss going on.

@Shehesheesh so 16,000 people have died and the hospitals aren’t busy.

We should all be incredibly proud that the NHS has coped.”

Errr no ... that’s like saying the fire service has coped with an inferno by saying they don’t deal with fires anymore.

Thanks everyone for a very interesting, though disturbing, thread. A la Piers Morgan: I wonder. He's gone so far down the hysterical Covid-means-the-end-of-all-things path that I wonder if there's any space for him to row back to consider the damage that mass hysteria and sensationalist reporting have caused. I've even started to wonder if it would be better not to publish daily statistics when the vast majority of the population simply divides the number of tested positives by the number of deaths and assumes that the answer (10% then rising) is the case fatality rate for anyone who comes into contact with the virus.

“ There is now going to be 3 month delay for those seeking seeking treatment”

One of the cancer patients I know has been told no hope of her next treatment before October. I’m hoping government will unbunch their boxers and get on with rearranging these essentials and she might get it before.

@Toddlerteaplease yes it coped but I think it also failed a lot of patients. Germans are very different to us, almost health anxiety type people but it means they present early and are encouraged to do so, we have people pitching up half dead because of the perceived inability of the NHS to manage numbers.

Now we’ve ridden this first wave we need to

1. Encourage and facilitate people with concerning symptoms to get seen early.
2. Set up covid negative and covid positive hospitals and get the testing turnaround right to facilitate this.
3. Start up normal NHS business.

4 Get the young and healthy population back to work so we can end the hysteria and start paying for all this.

1. Test and trace in the community. Stop the outbreaks in their tracks.

To add to my earlier post about my ICU being quiet, the ICU I worked in previously which is about 45 minutes away from my current place is horrendous. Morgue full, no body bags, staff who’ve never set foot in an ICU looking after ventilated patients while a small number of ICU nurses oversee things.

I hear all this going on front friends who work there, hear it happening in various other hospitals near me and just can’t figure out why we’re so quiet. If the plan is to keep us COVID free then 1) they’ve failed as we have positive patients and 2) if they want to keep us COVID free surely we could be using our units to continue working

Laniakea what decisions are you referring to?

I mentioned the media not because it informed a decision but because the reporting was of interest.

Same story in my trust. Staff literally looking for things to do. So much preparation and expectation the trust was on the ball from very early on. But how long can we stop non covid work awaiting the next influx (if it comes?)
One hospital in the trust is almost completely closed due to empty beds after patients were discharged as soon as med fit to prep for covid

V interesting thread

I don’t know much about Piers Morgan but from what I know, he can’t row back. He’s in “you’ve killed your mum by sending a card” mode isn’t he?

OP “ Get the young and healthy population back to work so we can end the hysteria and start paying for all this”

I’m not sure I qualify as young and healthy 😂 but I don’t have a job to go back to and there will be thousands of us competing for one job.

so 16,000 people have died and the hospitals aren’t busy.

I can’t recall is that hospital deaths, it is isn’t it. So probably even more when you add community deaths

A bit of subject but I called 111 for an elderly relative needing antibiotics...got a call and antibiotics within 2 hours...so please dont delay calling if you need them. I almost didnt as I felt it should be for coronavirus advice only but actually this was urgent too.

Really interesting thread.

I suspect it’s very different from one area of the country to another.

I find it very scary that people think they can’t just turn up to A and E if they need to. The media / whole 111 stay at home if you have symptoms thing has pushed it too far.

@QuietHospital you speak a lot of sense, well done for starting this thread let’s hope someone who can report on it picks it up.

Sorry, hit send too soon

The damage is done. It was done as soon as our reigning fool said
“ lockdown”.

It’s not like we are doing particularly well so we can’t say re lockdown being a bad call.

Perhaps it’s even worse, too many people aren’t making it in for help.

Community nursing here in ruralish Scotland, everything has been changed irreversibly, 24hr service covering a much larger area than before, don’t know if we will ever go back to separate teams which I don’t agree with, been told for weeks we will be absolutely inundated with covid patients either being sent home for palliative care or not being sent into hospital in the first place so managed at home. Reader they have been saying this for over a month now and nothing has changed, in fact the number here testing positive are tiny and something like only 4 people in intensive care over night. Instead because we are covering such A large area now some visits are being missed in our usual area and we are feeling under pressure to be in different bases for different things. Not sustainable

Last few weeks extremely busy, normally 8 beds, last week 25 level 3 and a couple of level 2 patients spread over 4 wards. Some with very mild comorbidities or none at all and many in their 50s/60s, several younger. Constantly proning or tubing patients, very unstable, not seen anything like this for years. We now have empty beds but this is probably because of 4 weeks lockdown. Who knows if it's plateaued....north west uk

Absolutely there are serious concerns about treatments and patients that are not going ahead at present. What I meant was I agree that I personally think it is good we have not (so far) needed the Nightingale hospitals a huge amount and that the NHS has not been overwhelmed in the way we saw in parts of Italy and in New York. I took that to be what Toddler meant? Rather than that everything in the NHS is currently perfect - of course it is a long way from that.

I just wanted to come into this thread and perhaps give some balance that some clinical areas really are exceptionally busy at this time. Not to mention how busy some areas of social care are.

That said, absolutely if people are unwell with an emergency they should seek help and not feel they need to stay away.

I actually started a thread last week asking if I could turn up to A&E if I got scared re. any of my families exhibiting scary symptoms and was told no, I had to ring 111 and 999 only.