Nightingale hubs - help /hinderance/PR exercise

[peridito]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59823652

The eight temporary "Nightingale" units will each house about 100 patients, with building starting this week

Royal Preston hospital in Lancashire
St James' University Hospital in Leeds
Lister Hospital in Stevenage
St George's Hospital in Tooting
William Harvey Hospital in Ashford, Kent
North Bristol Hospital
Solihull Hospital
University Hospitals Birmingham
University Hospitals Leicester

temporary structures will be set up in the grounds of hospitals so staff, equipment and emergency departments are close at hand.

Only those patients who are close to being discharged and need minimal support will be cared for at these facilities.

not much detail ,I wonder how much help they'll be by (presumably) providing a hot zone for recovering Covid patients.

But surely this will be extra pressure for NHS staff figuring out resources to accommodate them ,even if they're just erected and not used .And there will be no extra staff to provide care in them ..so increasing bed space by a 100 but no staff ,nurses ,cleaners ,caterers .

My local hospital in London has had to close wards because they can't staff them .

I wasn't thinking of you, the80sweregreat - more the sort who read headlines like this and think it actually indicates some action

I am old enough to remember convalescent homes. My grandmother was in one for a few weeks after a hysterectomy.

Rather than spending £'millions designing and building temporary wards, I can't help thinking it would be a lot less hassle to ask for help from Premier Inns/Travelodges near hospitals. It wouldn't take long to tweak the beds etc.

There was an initiative a few years ago for people needing a bit of post-discharge oversight to be discharged to households with spare rooms etc while recuperating. Unsurprisingly I don't think it came to anything.

I agree with all of you.

And they say hospices will be used too.

• they have no spare capacity
• is the govt expecting people to stop dying of other things (OK they might die earlier of covid, some of them I suppose)
• infection control in a hospice???

We're looking at expanding discharge capacity in this way as it's pretty much Christmas our only option given we can't recruit carers. We've found people are more likely to go for care type roles if employed by the NHS (probably due to better t&cs) so we're not going in without thinking about staffing. We need the hospital beds urgently

Random Christmas in there!

I seriously suspect this will be the same as the other Nightingale hospitals.

Lots of money will be spent making them look good, there will be lots of fuss made about them opening up. Look at us, look how much we are trying to do. We really do care.

Then they will fade away and quietly get dismantled after barely/ never being used.

"There's no need to do anything to reduce cases but hey hospitals, is there anywhere you could put a marquee up or park some refrigerated mortuary lorries? No reason. "

@SpringRainbow

I seriously suspect this will be the same as the other Nightingale hospitals.

Lots of money will be spent making them look good, there will be lots of fuss made about them opening up. Look at us, look how much we are trying to do. We really do care.

Then they will fade away and quietly get dismantled after barely/ never being used.

I really hope you are right.

Because given that we Know there are no staff available for these "extra beds" the alternative is that they are places to put those who don't meet the triage threshold for further care that will have to be put in place when the system really cannot cope.

See also:

"Cases are going to be astonishingly high in a few weeks. We don't plan to do much except advise people to test before going to NYE parties. I wonder if we should've ordered some more LFD tests or expanded PCR capacity ....? Nah."

@SpringRainbow

I seriously suspect this will be the same as the other Nightingale hospitals.

Lots of money will be spent making them look good, there will be lots of fuss made about them opening up. Look at us, look how much we are trying to do. We really do care.

Then they will fade away and quietly get dismantled after barely/ never being used.

Well at least tents in hospital car parks won't cost so much to dismantle.

@Sowhatifiam

I don’t get this….we don’t need restrictions but we do need extra bed space? Surely banning large events for a few weeks would make a difference?

Of course it would, but it would also be a big difference to Tory pockets too eh?

Has anyone seen anything on how the government plan to manage the same old Nightingale staffing issue?

It's not an area I know much about but the hospice and the care home I have personal experience with are both crying out for staff. As are the local care at home agencies.

To be fair , a box of tests did show up today in our post and we only ordered them on Tuesday !
I guess it depends where you live as if they show up or not.
I was surprised.

@MollyQueenOfSocks

We can't staff our existing Hospitals - not even with agency staff and not even under Extreme pressures with Business Continuity plans being actioned.

Where the fuck do the government think the staff are going to come from?

I would also like to know this.

@Wingedharpy

Well, I'm a retired Nurse with a big garage so they can send a couple here.

Only someone who has never had any patient contact whatsoever, and lacking in any imagination, would think this was the answer.

Spot on.

I thought the plan was for military nurses and Dr's to staff them. But I could have misunderstood. They are technically just erecting field hospitals.

The patients in them will probably be minimal care and the "well" bed blockers. However can't see anyone's family being impressed that uncle Joe is in a tent in the car park for the next few months as they sort out his care package 😳

I expect they'll just filter off staff doing other things.
I know one of the hospitals mentioned and have used it often. I wouldn't say it's cutting edge or efficient. (not the hospital's fault, but you already get the idea that it's a sticking plaster on a gunshot wound set up and if anything major was needed it would collapse)

@CoedenNadolig

I thought the plan was for military nurses and Dr's to staff them. But I could have misunderstood. They are technically just erecting field hospitals.

The patients in them will probably be minimal care and the "well" bed blockers. However can't see anyone's family being impressed that uncle Joe is in a tent in the car park for the next few months as they sort out his care package 😳

It's my understanding that most military medics that can be are already seconded to the NHS.

One of the biggest problems with the Nightingales was that there were no facilities to feed the patients or for the patients to go to the toilet, shower or bath.

They also had no ambulance bays but I imagine they're getting round that this time by siting the Nightingale tents IN the ambulance bay.

I agree that these are going to be holding pens for bed blockers (which is not the same as the original Nightingales, which were more like acute wards)

The social care crisis isn't going to be fixed quickly, so this is a patch to get those fit for discharge, but who cannot be safely discharged, out of acute wards so that there is space to admit new patients who need to be admitted.

The nightingale hospital in London at the excel centre that opened in April 2020 by Matt Hancock is now a vaccination clinic.
That cost many millions to hire agency staff such as builders etc that all earned a fair amount , then they were all laid off.
A few big tents in a car park might not cost as much , but it's still money that has been signed off to help with these new hubs. Plus yes the people in them might be very elderly or confused and they do tend to feel the cold much more too , of course.
Stevenage hospital is getting one apparently they said on look east.
It's good that they are planning ahead I suppose , but I was still surprised that they would have enough staff around to be in them.

@SantaHat I agree entirely!
A PR exercise, just like last time.
Once again these clowns are criminally negligent

Ah I see.

My impression of the original Nightingales were they were sadly places to die, because they had massive morgues fitted on to them so the feeding and showering sadly would not have been needed.

It's so grim and horrid to actually write that out 🥺

Weren't they intended for patients on ventilators, so therefore not needing loos etc?

I mean this is just a joke isn't it? The nhs is under strain due to staff shortage but we'll expand bed capacity anyway and staff it with.....? Which is exactly what we did before at great cost...but no real benefit.
We won't put in any restrictions because the economy, but we will advise people to test to avoid passing the virus on and thus swamping the nhs but there are no tests so... I don't understand any of this thinking. I'm tired.