To think we just need to use the nightingale hospitals?

[Mummamama]

The (seven I think) nightingale hospitals that were built last year precisely for COVID have barely been used. Why can we not just set these up again and transfer COVID patients to them freeing up normal hospitals for usual things? My understanding was the army was going to he used to staff them, why can this not happen now??
I understand the importance of not overwhelming the NHS but there doesn't seem to be an end game plan anymore, we can't keep having restrictions forever. At some point surely everyone will get COVID and it seems you can get it multiple times. Is it not better then to use our resources to enable the NHS to cope with the inevitable rather than spending huge amounts on lockdowns?

UK has had 11,000,000 known cases out of 66,700,000 people

It has a way to go to ‘infect’ everybody.

Let’s assume with the new variant that 1,000,000 people a week catch it. Of those some will require extra care, some hospital, some are young and need parents at home.

Let’s assume 1,500,000 in isolation.

How’s that going to work? We would need 55 weeks at 1,000,000 a week for this to end. Or cripple the hospitals or businesses.

I don’t think those places are still set up as nightingale hospitals. I thought it had all been taken down now.

@milly74

no staff waste of money GPs actually seeing patients would take huge pressure off hospitals We locked down to protect the NHS, our reward was the NHS has abandoned us

GPs are seeing patients

They didn’t build them, they just took ver a few exhibition centres.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/coronavirus

Covid can and does cause multi organ failure. You can't treat that in a converted exhibition hall. Staffing is another issue. There is barely enough trained staff to cope at the moment. That said if the NHS does get overwhelmed all you will have is the Nightingale Places. It's fucking scary.

GPs are not seeing patients, fact

Army! That's what the plan was last year. I know they won't all have much medical knowledge but if they are only treating COVID surely it's not going to take a 7 year medical degree to learn the ins and outs of every possible condition

I think you dont understand the complexities of caring for sick patients, particularly those who are intubated and ventilated.

I don’t think the nightingales are an option, certainly not from a staffing pov and I suspect would be pretty brutal places to be a patient in.

Too late now for this wave, but I think we should have invested a lot more in community, at home treatments. The hospitals should have been for people who couldn’t cope with monitoring and receiving treatment at home and the most severe cases. Most people are perfectly capable of administering basic treatments (including oxygen support) and recording observations at home with the right equipment and telephone support. Early intervention is key in a lot of covid cases that reach hospital and I think this could have been coordinated for people at home in a lot of cases.

Ther was no real plan to staff them, the army can do lots of things, but being good with a tank is not the same as being good at high dependency care or ICU. The reality is that even with army medics, army driving ambulances so the drivers can use their medical training, bringing in unqualified medical students, bringing back the retired medical professionals etc. there were still not enough staff to run the Nightingale hospitals.

They did not choose to not use them because they were not needed, they did not use them because they could not use them.

Can you imagine the uproar if a patient died while being look after by an under qualified/ under experienced member of the military?

Same old arguments.

@HarrysChild

“only treating covid”. Jesus wept OP.

You'd hardly need to know how to fix a broken leg would you?

@milly74

GPs are not seeing patients, fact

Yes they are... Fact.

@Mummamama

Why did they ever waste our money to build them if they were never going to be used

Maybe not a quick solution then, but even if it means more time to train staff to work in them and offer them better pay surely that would be a saving over continual lockdowns?

They were built to help worst case scenarios. They were never going to be able to be perfect running hospitals.

Thankfully due to lockdowns and mask mandates despite reaching critical levels we never got to the point of places like India having piles of the dead in the streets - but the Nightingale hospitals were there as a resort if needed. Much better to have and not need than deal with that scenario.

The Glasgow nightingale hospital has been completely dismantled - they couldn’t just keep paying huge sums of money for the space (also COP26 was on the site.)

I don’t suppose anything is off the table. I know in Scotland hospitals the in-patient covid number aren’t high at the moment but hospitals/A&Es are busier than usual even for the time of year. We are also have a major still evolving problem with covid+ staff shortages.

The Bristol one is being used as a vaccination centre.

@milly74

GPs are not seeing patients, fact

I've been seen by my gp, both in video call and face to face several times this year.

Also been seen by the practice nurse face to face.

So while some gps may not be doing face to face appointments it's certainly not a fact that they are not seeing patients.

@milly74

GPs are not seeing patients, fact

Putting the word "fact" at the end of a sentence does not make something true.

Some GPs are not conducting in person appointments, others are operating on a mix of in person and online, some are in person only.

People with broken legs can catch covid.

@Cornettoninja

I don’t think the nightingales are an option, certainly not from a staffing pov and I suspect would be pretty brutal places to be a patient in.

Too late now for this wave, but I think we should have invested a lot more in community, at home treatments. The hospitals should have been for people who couldn’t cope with monitoring and receiving treatment at home and the most severe cases. Most people are perfectly capable of administering basic treatments (including oxygen support) and recording observations at home with the right equipment and telephone support. Early intervention is key in a lot of covid cases that reach hospital and I think this could have been coordinated for people at home in a lot of cases.

Covid patients are already being treated at home if they don’t require o2. Community schemes are well established.

However having o2 at home is a fire risk it isn’t that simple as chucking o2 cylinders at people with a sats monitor and sending them
Home.

Why did they ever waste our money to build them if they were never going to be usedconfused

They were to protect our sensibilities and prevent people from suffering illness and dying in full view. Basically warehousing the sick. Harsh but true.

Just to point out that the Glasgow Nightingale was used for outpatient clinics and imaging whilst it was running so it didn’t just sit empty although there were obviously vast amounts of space and resources not used.

@milly74 the nhs hasn’t abandoned anyone. It’s broken. Staff are broken. The system is broken.