My friend is stuck in hospital because there are not enough staff to process his discharge

[Jacaranda75]

My friend has been in a London hospital for a couple of weeks now (not Covid). He has been well enough to go home for a few days, but the hospital are struggling as so many staff are off with Covid or isolating after becoming close contacts. They just don’t have enough medical staff on duty to cope with even basic procedures such as my friend’s discharge. So he’s stuck there. He’s fine, that’s not really the point.

Things are really bad at the moment. Especially in London. The NHS is on its knees. People saying it’s ‘just a mild illness’ need to think about the impact that it is having.

Thank you @BunsyGirl. What that doesn't split however is the split between spending on actual medical care and the systems' respective bureaucracies.

It's an interesting point because whilst France is bureaucratic to the nth degree their health components seem better joined up and the staff attitudes seem to be more professional. However I am not comparing like with like. In France my experiences are in the South West whereas in the UK they are in SW London/Surrey and for admin/nursing staff pay is simply not competitive and I suspect outside the major teaching hospitals we get the staff, particularly on the admin side, that nobody else wants and therefore the patient experience is dire.

One of the reasons discharge can take so long, is that they take all your away, bin them, and re-prescribe prior to discharge. I kid you not.

DM had this on three occassions, after being an inpatient for heart problems. Way prior to Covid by the way.

Each and every time she then went back to her GP, who re-prescribed the meds she had been on previously and binned the hospital prescribed ones.

Talk about waste of time and resources.

@Jacaranda75

To be honest, I feel more sorry for the nursing staff. Which is the point of my post really. My friend is OK.

You feel more sorry for the nursing staff than for your friend who’s been sick in hospital for weeks, and needlessly stuck there for extra days, because our health service is so disorganised and incompetent they can’t even get it together to discharge people in a timely way?

@BunsyGirl - Most of the top countries have a private part payment which is included in the spend per person. Not comparable to UK system. Apples and pears.

OP please can you ask MN to alter the thread title, it's really misleading.

'My friend is stuck in hospital awaiting a social care package'

Would be more accurate and would dispel a lot of the posts advising self-discharge and bemoaning NHS staff.

Interesting that NHS staff are isolating. I'm NHS clinical and when my 10yo had covid (we do live together, didn't isolate in the house) I was expected to lft daily and work clinically.

Because I'm community based and secondary /specialist care pretty much all of my patients opted for phone contact and I delayed my visits for a week or so. Meant I had a bonkers couple of weeks following; no loss of service but a lot of (unpaid) overtime in the following weeks to catch up.

In our trust the local authorities have stated they are broken and unable to get the staff to provide homecare immediately. They have suggested families and friends help care for their loved ones until things improve. I assume some will be able too, but lots of families are broken and exhausted.

The care centres are shut. Respite is closed mostly and care homes have no spaces.

Things need to change but I can't see that happening anytime soon

I hope your friend gets home soon.

In response to the comment asking why people couldn't just get a cab, I had an accident last summer and incurred the following incidentals just to exist:

Notwithstanding DH's - taxi from Perpignan to the Pyrenees once back in the UK:

3 return trips to hospital appointments when I couldn't drive (£60). Various Ubers about £180. 4 wash & blow dries as I couldn't wash my own hair £120 (ubers back and forth), two pull on bra things as couldn't do up my bras (£20), probably lying an extra £150 on ready meals and takeaways.

Admittedly I carried on working on zoom and teams so had to look decent but it did bring me up short. My life was barely interrupted for it to be so. If I'd been on SSP because I had a manual job and couldn't work or had been on universal credit then I couldn't have afforded the £8 on an uber home I imagine. I managed because dd cooked for three weeks, the cleaner carried on cleaning, etc.

Thinking about how I'd have managed in different circumstances was very humbling.

@BigWoollyJumpers but someone up the thread was suggesting that the US was better because they spend more! It absolutely isn’t! My original point was that it’s not all about the money we spend as people believe that’s all the NHS needs. Some people also suggest that we spend far less than every other developed country but that’s not true. Italy, Spain, NZ, South Korea all spend less. Iceland and Finland spend very similar. I am not against more money being spent but chucking money at the NHS won’t magically solve its problems.

Unvaxxed people are allowed in care homes to visit as long as they test. Why are staff any different?

Because they’re staff, interacting with residents (sometimes very closely) and other staff throughout their (sometimes long) shifts, rather than just carefully visiting one resident. What an odd question.

[quote Jacaranda75]@Mickarooni I saw a news report the other day about medical staff from Lebanon coming here to work. They were so excited and happy to be here! That's the kind of people we want in our hospitals and care homes, not these entitled Covidiots who refuse to vaccinate.[/quote]
Or perhaps instead of keeping wages and conditions the lowest legally allowed (or even not legally allowed, but ignored), treating a sector we rely on with disdain, lack of respect and mockery, allowing care providers to do this while making profits, we should invest and treat the workers on the ground delivering the actual care with some respect and listen to them when they flag up issues and actually do something about it?
So many people said that mandatory vaccination would cause this issue, or rather exacerbate an issue that was already a problem, where's the plan to deal with that? To attract the right kind of people to the job? Oh right, a TV ad campaign that's attempting to attract people to a job that's largely nmw, no prospects, despised by society and seen as worthless, poor to non existent training and then blamed for the inadequate service delivered.
We're expected to welcome visitors who aren't vaccinated and shouted at if we dare to ask them to wear PPE, expected to curb our lives because 'duty of care', expected to care for unvaccinated residents, and then take the blame when people die of covid because it must be our fault, despite the fact that no care workers in care homes are unvaccinated. We're expected to work or face disciplinary action or/and no pay if we're living with a positive case, yet then blamed when people catch it.
We're expected to pick up the slack of this policy, the ones who are fully vaccinated and all anyone has got to say is 'Sack the lot!' in answer to the very real problems that are facing social care right now.
Bringing people in from other countries isn't the answer, improving conditions for those working in social care so they can afford to live on a ft job, so they aren't expected to work for free, so they have good training, so they are respected and treated like human beings rather than something that just exists to provide care is the answer to attracting people to this job.

[quote BunsyGirl]@BigWoollyJumpers but someone up the thread was suggesting that the US was better because they spend more! It absolutely isn’t! My original point was that it’s not all about the money we spend as people believe that’s all the NHS needs. Some people also suggest that we spend far less than every other developed country but that’s not true. Italy, Spain, NZ, South Korea all spend less. Iceland and Finland spend very similar. I am not against more money being spent but chucking money at the NHS won’t magically solve its problems.[/quote]
Agreed. Sorry I misinterpreted your post. Most people use that list to show how we "chronically" underfund the NHS. Yes, of course it could do with more money, but not without a new system of funding, part private part state.

@borntobequiet

Unvaxxed people are allowed in care homes to visit as long as they test. Why are staff any different?

Because they’re staff, interacting with residents (sometimes very closely) and other staff throughout their (sometimes long) shifts, rather than just carefully visiting one resident. What an odd question.

"Carefully" visiting?

Kissing and cuddling their relatives, taking off masks as soon as staff backs are turned and getting shitty when asked not to do those things if seen, then as you rightly pointed out, care staff are needing to provide close personal care to them and other residents, despite PPE and hygiene used correctly (because none of those things will totally prevent transmission) and risk passing it around the home. Not to mention other residents interacting with each other too.
So I don't think it's an odd question from what I've experienced as someone dealing with it every day, either it's about protecting the vulnerable or it's not.

All the more reason for staff to be vaccinated then, if it’s such a free for all as far as visitors are concerned.

@borntobequiet

All the more reason for staff to be vaccinated then, if it’s such a free for all as far as visitors are concerned.

And they are. I'm vaccinated, I'm not against vaccination. None of that has or is addressing the issues that are present in social care around lack of staff. No one is interested in addressing that, just keen to shout about vaccination. The loss of unvaccinated staff (no matter how you feel about it) has tipped the sector into crisis, a crisis that's happening now, that has been building over years. I'm not saying don't vaccinate, I'm saying fix the issues around staffing before you deliberately and knowingly make them worse, causing people to get worse care, or no care at all. And before you overload those who are left and vaccinated to the point they can't cope and lose them too. It was known that the industry couldn't sustain the loss of these posts, yet nothing has been done to address the reasons why that loss has caused this crisis. Yet it's all about protecting the vulnerable.....

Kissing and cuddling their relatives

😲😲😱😱😱. what a horrendous crime. Imagine? Don’t they know we are in a PANDEMIC! Better get the Covid police to arrest them all this instant!

None of that has or is addressing the issues that are present in social care around lack of staff

Totally agree with this and apologise for my lack of sympathy. I can’t imagine how difficult things are for you and your colleagues right now.

Kissing and cuddling their relatives

😲😲😱😱😱. what a horrendous crime. Imagine? Don’t they know we are in a PANDEMIC! Better get the Covid police to arrest them all this instant!

If people really can't see the sense in keeping your distance and wearing PPE from someone who is vulnerable, and who lives with a whole group of vulnerable people, and object so much to it then they should probably take their loved ones home and care for them, where they can kiss and cuddle their relatives without putting anyone else at risk too. Though I guess the care staff make a good scapegoat when there's an outbreak though don't they? Certainly not the relatives who remove masks, fake LFT tests and then share close air space and get physically close with someone, and may or may not be vaccinated.

@borntobequiet

Thank you for the apology, it's appreciated and I hope that you can see not everyone who is speaking about the effects of the mandate is an anti vaxxers or conspiracy theorists or any of those other things that get said, but rather living with the concequences.
It is hard, I'm halfway through a 16 hour shift, not my first this week. However hard it is for me though, it's worse for the people needing social care at the moment that can't get it, that are getting it through rushed and stressed out staff, those that are stuck in hospital (increasing the pressures there) those are the people who are really suffering with all this, and they have little to no voice, and they're not being listened to either. We're supposed to advocate for them, but no one's listening to us either.

Many, many people can not just self-discharge! This is one of the big problems we have in the NHS is when someone is medically fit but waiting on other services before they can be discharged.