Hospital staff - how is the covid situation where you work?

[Ocdsucks8613]

Just wondering how things are in the hospital where you work? Are you seeing a surge in covid patients. How are your staff levels?

"we also can't come in if someone we lives with has it either."

This rule needs to change imo.

In our trust you also have to stay at home if someone you live with tests positive so it's COVID related absence rather than they all have COVID.

@Tanfastic thank you for the information

Yes at our trust we also have to stay home the entire 10 days if we live with someone with COVID. And have to have a PCR if identified as a contact. The trust has no testing facilities in place and no plan to expedite this so we have to wait however long it takes to get back to work which is very very frustrating!

The national rule about health care staff staying home for 10 days for household contacts changed on Friday so hopefully your Trusts will catch up soon

@Donatella

The national rule about health care staff staying home for 10 days for household contacts changed on Friday so hopefully your Trusts will catch up soon

It's trust by trust. Ours isn't changing.

It's worse dealing with in hospital transmission shutting wards down that it is dealing with staff loss - they will redeploy staff first.

All my team are vaccinated. Matrons set to investigate staff in their care group who are non compliant from January.

Our policy is if your vaccinated and someone you live with is positive but you have no symptoms you still come to work.

In our department (ED) staff (symptomatic or contact) are being told to come in and have a rapid covid swab and isolate in an office until the results are back, which is normally taking an hour or two. We were just isolating for 10 days like normal until last week, when staffing got so dangerous that they’ve implemented this.

The overwhelming majority of people being admitted for Covid illnesses now are unvaccinated, or don’t want to get the booster. Also most are being managed in majors/wards, so aren’t taking up quite as much ITU space as before.

However we are also a tertiary referral centre for ECMO, and are almost out of machines. Last year it started getting really awful around NYE. Absolutely dreading it.

@Masterblasterjammin I wonder if we work in the same place…

If so the chat about ecmo I heard was that capacity is limited by staffing - Covid/ brexit and ptsd post waves 1/2…

I’m really worried.

@StopGo

I'm curious to know if the staff of sick are vaccinated or not. Not to judge anyone but as a measure of how effective the vaccines are.

Cannot work in NSW without double vax. Not effective due to vaccine injury and illness, too many staff off sick. Patient ratio the other day was 10:1.

All my friends who are unwell are triple vaccinated.

Vaccines reduce spread and severity. They don’t abolish infection.

Unfortunately what we are seeing is high community case loads taking out people due to isolation which is reducing the pool of staff to care for the predominantly unvaccinated who are needing hospital (especially ICU support).

There is an element of confirmation bias in reporting but my understanding is that virtually all the patients requiring high level care for their Covid infection are unvaccinated now. Many are young (sub 40).

Given that, even in London, the unvaccinated are the minority this can be attributed to vaccines reducing hospital admissions /illness severity.

Unfortunately not enough people have chosen to be vaccinated because of this we are still seeing enough sick individuals to put the NHS under pressure. The effect of Covid positive staff is also a factor.

others with non preventable conditions are having their care affected.

It feels wrong quite frankly and is something a lot of staff are struggling with.

@MauveMavis

All my friends who are unwell are triple vaccinated.

Vaccines reduce spread and severity. They don’t abolish infection.

Unfortunately what we are seeing is high community case loads taking out people due to isolation which is reducing the pool of staff to care for the predominantly unvaccinated who are needing hospital (especially ICU support).

There is an element of confirmation bias in reporting but my understanding is that virtually all the patients requiring high level care for their Covid infection are unvaccinated now. Many are young (sub 40).

Given that, even in London, the unvaccinated are the minority this can be attributed to vaccines reducing hospital admissions /illness severity.

Unfortunately not enough people have chosen to be vaccinated because of this we are still seeing enough sick individuals to put the NHS under pressure. The effect of Covid positive staff is also a factor.

others with non preventable conditions are having their care affected.

It feels wrong quite frankly and is something a lot of staff are struggling with.

Your post makes me so sad. I've had all the vaccines and booster available. I isolate, choose who I mix with, wear a mask and wash my hands. It's not helping at all.

@Ocdsucks8613 I am in the south west.
Our team of over 60 have only 2 unvaccinated. We are an elective area and are looking at stopping and becoming a ward.