Hospitals critical incidents

[Spottyphonecase24]

I have seen a number of hospital trusts have declared this today. What does this actually mean and how does it affect us? Boris didn’t seem to be bothered by this should we be?

I had a friend a nurse in her sixtiess who lived 200 miles from her mother, having finished her shifts she drove up to mums to do the caring so they only needed part time care. My frIend had a massive stroke followed by two more, she went into a home whilst her mother complained about her absence.

My neighbor had the emergency thing around her neck in her eighties she fell a number of times three times in one day. Another neighbors were the contact they went round picked her up etc. They were twenty years younger but their back went.

The elderly ladies children were five hours away. . So those who say care for your own it's impossible if you're not local or have your own health issues

@Namechangedforspooky

No beds and loads of staff off with covid in our trust. It means there’s no patient flow through the hospital so people back up in A&E and eventually we can no longer offload ambulances. Our local ambulance trust had 40% of its ambulances stuck at hospital last night for this reason. It makes it very difficult for ambulances to respond to all cat A calls (immediately life threatening) which is why it is so worrying. The ambulance delays currently are the worst they have ever been in my career (sometimes many many hours to get an ambulance for an elderly person on the floor with a broken hip for example).

Thus is the tip of the iceberg. I could go on. Services are being compromised at many levels. Hospitals have been working at close to 100% capacity for years as a result of years of underfunding and bed cuts (we have half the hospital beds we had 40 years ago)

In the theory of how you should manage hospital beds, you are meant to use only 80% of the beds in the system, so that you have capacity to deal with random emergencies on a day to day basis, without sending patients from London to Newcastle because that is the only bed in England.

We have actually been running beds at 105% occupancy as a usual sort of thing (with patients on home trial leave from mental health beds having their beds used up another patient etc).

And even when we were shipping patients up and down the country, we were still closing more beds as an "efficiency saving".

https://twitter.com/chrisceohopson/status/1478786960303005698?s=21

NHS stretched like never before.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-59882953

Nearly 118,000 NHS staff absences.

Vallance was trying to explain that what looks like cases dropping off a bit in London might not help much in terms of NHS pressure as the spread in younger is not the biggest concern.

Also the worry in other areas is the higher average age.

I'm not feeling at all relaxed about the NHS being described as being on a war footing... and the government doing nothing to address that.

[quote Tiredalwaystired]@Alexandra2001 what do you mean by your comment about waiting for someone to finish a tea break?

Because it comes across as a nasty attack on the staff in the hospital. Who are barely having water breaks or toilet breaks at present.

Your comment makes it sound like everyone is just watching ambulances line up outside the window and shrugging.[/quote]
I was being totally sarcastic.

but i'm sure this is exactly what some people think, another poster said taking a Taxi to hospital after a HA was a good thing......

@rrhuth

Vallance was trying to explain that what looks like cases dropping off a bit in London might not help much in terms of NHS pressure as the spread in younger is not the biggest concern.

Also the worry in other areas is the higher average age.

I'm not feeling at all relaxed about the NHS being described as being on a war footing... and the government doing nothing to address that.

They do not use the NHS, why should it bother them?

@the80sweregreat

How can people these days care for elderly parents realistically? It may be ok for the middle classes who have money to have ' granny annexes ' built or have carers paid for privately , but for many it just isn't feasible. People have to work to pay bills , they may not have space or have their own children living at home who need care and also can't afford to move out. Many are estranged from their families. They may not want to put their lives on hold either. It isn't always black or white , the reasons that many end up in care homes. Putting a loved one in care isn't done easily without much soul searching and finding the right care home isn't easy or affordable.

Obviously I don't know what age you are. However I am mid 40's, Working Class, My parents both worked and bought their own home. My friends as a youngster were all pretty similar.

I have just sat down and counted how many of my childhood friends had Grandparents move in with them. I worked it out be around a third. In pretty much all of the cases Granny/Grandad shared a bedroom with one of the Younger children.

I also recall Friends Mum's finishing work in time to collect the kids from School & on the way home would pop in to check on ageing relatives daily.

Yes I know some have moved miles from Parents, However there are still many who live in the same town. It is all very well complaining about the lack of resources. It will only improve one of two ways. We increase taxation to pay a fair wage to carers, or we start accepting we could also play our part.

www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/05/ministers-must-act-now-on-nhs-staffing-crisis-health-chiefs-warn

@rrhuth

Vallance was trying to explain that what looks like cases dropping off a bit in London might not help much in terms of NHS pressure as the spread in younger is not the biggest concern.

Also the worry in other areas is the higher average age.

I'm not feeling at all relaxed about the NHS being described as being on a war footing... and the government doing nothing to address that.

Yeah. >nods<

I think it's premature to say that the London Omicron wave has "peaked" based on a few days of data over the Christmas and New Year break, but even if it has peaked, there's a whole rest of the country out there with different demographics, geography, and resources.

It will only improve one of two ways. We increase taxation to pay a fair wage to carers, or we start accepting we could also play our part

People live a lot longer now a days, with a range of complex conditions, it just isn't possible to provide care for many years, the stuff my DD was doing as a domiciliary carer was full on, nursing care, for about £6 ph, she had to run a car and for every 8hr shift, she'd work 10hrs, then there were split shifts, 4 hrs am, 3hr gap (unpaid) 4 hr shift.

So many carers are leaving, her former agency has handed back so many council contracts, its a service in crisis and this is nothing to do with CV.

We live in a retirement area. Folks sell up the family home in their home towns, cities, to live the dream of hills, mountains and beaches, lower crime rates. It's great for a time, family love visiting it's a holiday.

Fast forward grandchildren grow up, less visits, their health issues increase, bereavement, their own child are many miles away trying to organise care packages,

Ten houses in our cul-de-sac three of them have elderly people widowed now. None of them have children locally they're in London, France, USA.

They do have some lovely carers who are rushed off their feet. Now and again an ambulance arrives because of a serious health problem.

Retirement in paradise doesn't last

@Alexandra2001

It will only improve one of two ways. We increase taxation to pay a fair wage to carers, or we start accepting we could also play our part

People live a lot longer now a days, with a range of complex conditions, it just isn't possible to provide care for many years, the stuff my DD was doing as a domiciliary carer was full on, nursing care, for about £6 ph, she had to run a car and for every 8hr shift, she'd work 10hrs, then there were split shifts, 4 hrs am, 3hr gap (unpaid) 4 hr shift.

So many carers are leaving, her former agency has handed back so many council contracts, its a service in crisis and this is nothing to do with CV.

Demographics in the UK are the problem.

The ratio of working folks to retired folks used to be 12:1 because life expectancy back then (1950s) was only a few years over the retirement age.

The baby boomer generation created a huge problem in the way we fund an aging society via taxes.

That ratio has fallen to 6/7:1 and the retired folks are now living way beyond age 65.

The harsh reality is that we simply cannot afford to pay their pensions, healthcare, and social care.

Our options are:

1. Massively increase taxes (working folks)
2. Cut spending (working folks)
3. Reduce pensioner benefits
4. Tax the retired folks

1 & 2 affect working people
3 & 4 affect retired folks

Combination of all four could work only if heavily tilted towards 3 & 4, because the young have been absolutely hammered over the last 10 years in favour of the old.

Society is now massively un-balanced, and its creating significant inter-generational polarisation.

Something has to give. We simply cannot afford to keep taking resources from the young & working folks and giving it to the old.

That is how you end up with permanently low levels of productivity and falling living standards.

Retirement in paradise doesn't last yes urban areas are better for older people in some ways due to proximity to services

Acute hospital bed capacity isn't the issue. We don't need more beds in acute hospitals. The crises is in social care beds. As discussed we either step up as families to support our elderlies, or we (individually or by taxation) pay for more staff and support either in people's homes, or in care facilities.

@BigWoollyJumpers

Acute hospital bed capacity isn't the issue. We don't need more beds in acute hospitals. The crises is in social care beds. As discussed we either step up as families to support our elderlies, or we (individually or by taxation) pay for more staff and support either in people's homes, or in care facilities.

That won't work either.

After Brexit, there are not enough staff to cover social care even if wages go up.

Same with nurses.

Brexit crippled our ability to meet that labour demand, even with much higher wages.

There is no way out of this conundrum in the short-term. Even the medium-term is difficult as you would need immigration.

In terms of funding care, I've never understood where there's so much opposition to people paying for it themselves through a tax/ payment from property they own. The one thing the older generation have much more than the younger is property - in many cases owned free and clear by the time they need care.

The state wouldn't benefit from it until the beneficiaries of the care died, of course.

It would have to be fairly applied though, and not be the case that the super wealthy could somehow dodge it and get the taxpayer to pay.

Which is probably the problem - given we're not funding the NHS properly yet somehow inexplicably paying vast sums for potholes to be filled in in some rich Tory's driveway.

So someone who’s worked for their whole life and paid I to the system should pay back their personal savings in care, yet a young person who’s paid for a minimal amount of years gets free treatment for the same care?

How does that work? Do they youngsters have a huge debt for life, paid back on death?

@BluebellsGreenbells

So someone who’s worked for their whole life and paid I to the system should pay back their personal savings in care, yet a young person who’s paid for a minimal amount of years gets free treatment for the same care?

How does that work? Do they youngsters have a huge debt for life, paid back on death?

You seeom to be in the wrong thread.

We are talking about social care.

What happens when someone going by taxi with a suspected heart attack or stroke has a cardiac arrest or massive stroke in the taxi? Before long taxi companies will refuse to take people to hospital. We need the army to start working alongside the ambulance service just like they did when the fire service was on strike.

@DSGR

They happen every winter, sometimes they only last a few days, sometimes longer. They are an official NHS term for getting help from neighbouring hospitals/alerting NHS bosses to the need for more resources

And now they are not winter pressures.. There is something else going on ... And they dont last a few days.. And no one gets more beds or more nurses cus many are ill, off sick, with stress, or have left if they can. You speak as if this is just a blip and nothing to be worried about.

All these people bleating on that we should just step up and care for our elderlies...so when women like me who do so, who work in the public sector, the nhs/schools loses their specialist skills and it will cause more short staffing, kids suffer because their mothers are run ragged, women don't build up a private pension themselves because they've been at uni/looking after their kids/caring for parents, and the economy suffers because we have less disposable income as we can't work the same hours.
But sure, blame it on the middle aged people who can't be bothered to look after granny.

Smoking is one answer. It's a net gain to the economy (backed by studies). Massive amount of tax (that more than covers the smoker's healthcare) and on average shorter life expectancy - so lower pensions and social care cost. And afterall, what point giving up smoking because "it shortens your life" to then be seen as a 'burden' on society (despite decades of income tax contribution) when you, well, live longer.

Btw it isn't only working people who pay tax. Aside from pensioner's decades of income tax, everyone pays tax, i.e. VAT.

Separately Re London. Proportionally lower elderly population is easy with 9 million inhabitants including many young new arrivals. But when the new ones come, the majority of the older ones stay. London has the largest elderly population in the UK. It's also the UK's poorest - Age UK study found that London pensioners are more likely to be in poverty than pensioners anywhere else in the UK. This is relevant because of the socioeconomic risk factors with Covid.

Also the reporting is misleading. The cases are rising faster in other areas, yes, but that's because London's numbers are already sky high - and still rising. They haven't stopped increasing, just that it's not increasing as fast as it was.... because it's already really bad. A 'stable' high. And no huge increase in ICU doesn't necessarily mean all is ok. It's simply that many of the elderly are too frail to go onto ventilators.

The situation sadly isn't ok at all in London. The only change is that other areas are begining to suffer too.