extent of military support - no big deal ?

[peridito]

Another 400 drafted in today to support hospitals .

We've already got 1,800 "supporting the NHS response to the Covid-19 pandemic", and "More than 400 military paramedics assisting ambulance trusts, with 313 in the Welsh Ambulance Service NHS Trust and 96 in the Scottish Ambulance Service."

Plus another 1,000 working on the vaccine booster programme, with 730 in England, 221 in Scotland and 98 in Wales.

Is it just me or does anyone else feel that the media /gov are underplaying the significance of the military support currently deployed ?

I know it's not new and that there was support last year but I feel unsettled by the numbers and how little it seems to be discussed in Parliament ( though I may have missed that ).

I think its fantastic (not NHS staff shortages, but the fact that we have a highly trained, world wide respected military to be proud of, who we can call on in times such as these). We should be shouting about this more, singing their praises from the roof tops.

I agree @ANameChangeAgain,we're very very lucky to have them.

I suppose my concern is that things have got this bad and the PM isn't admitting it or being held to account .

Is it just me or does anyone else feel that the media /gov are underplaying the significance of the military support currently deployed

I certainly think deploying “the Army” (actually other armed services are available) has almost become a bit of a catch phrase with certain politicians….

As to whether HMG should be doing so, and whether the Forces have the resources to keep being used to plug gaps domestically…don’t know….

short term, as a one off, fine. If it starts to be long term, we have an issue surely?

My other thought is there enough military support for every hospital that might need it? It's all very well giving help to London but the north west is not the centre of omicron so what help are they getting?

I thought about starting a thread on this earlier. I'm feeling increasingly uneasy about the stories coming out of the NHS from the doctors and nurses. I feel that they there is an unacceptable burden that is being put on them as individuals. Their working conditions sound absolutely horrendous. I don't know what the answer is or how we can help on an individual level. It just feels wrong.

Some military medics routinely work in the NHS as there haven't been proper military hospitals for donkey's years.

Everyone knows there are massive staff shortages and it’s great that the military are able to step on and help. If the government and media make too much of it though, people will panic as they did on the first lockdown with all the “tanks on the street” rumours.

As a military wife of course the service they provide is amazing but they seem to be called in for everything recently my husband spent 10 weeks driving fuel tanks even after the shortage was over! Anyone who is associated with someone in the military will surely agree

I suppose my concern is that things have got this bad and the PM isn't admitting it or being held to account
We are in an unusual and emergency situation, the whole world is in the same boat. Focus though needs to be on training new doctors and nurses, and incentives for job retention. Training for new health professionals takes years, so I don't think the situation will be changing any time soon.

Given the number of hospitals in the UK that’s hardly a major input of help is it? I’m not saying those people won’t be very well used, but I’m not sure I would describe this number as a significant level - some trusts will have no military support at all.

I know that the fire service local to me provided ambulance drivers during lockdown - less traffic accidents etc so they were under used (which is good) so the drivers were redeployed to support ambulance service.

Again ,I absolutely agree Anamechange.

LadyCat the media will always dramatise and hype ,it's what sells papers /gets clicks .I'm surprised they're not doing so in this case .

Given the number of hospitals in the UK that’s hardly a major input of help
Good point Home ,I hadn't looked at it like that .

I suppose over all they do make up Tiny percentage but if you one of 40 in a London hospital day that’s massive help to those on the ground and the patients who other wise be stuck without any help.

I do worry about them getting enough rest though. Plus it’s not like they are on massive wage a young soldier isn’t on huge amount so very much is cheap Labour. It’s not like they are going be giving the living wage for every 18h shift they do is it.

@fancyfrank1

As a military wife of course the service they provide is amazing but they seem to be called in for everything recently my husband spent 10 weeks driving fuel tanks even after the shortage was over! Anyone who is associated with someone in the military will surely agree

Agree..

I do however suspect some Very Senior Officers (VSOs) quite like the idea of the publicity that surrounds their personnel being used as they are at the moment..it all helps the services case when it comes to spending reviews and fights with the Treasury…

VSOs aside increasingly these days it does appear many people do tend to take a dim view of the Forces ….until their assistance is required, so maybe there is an upside to the stories in the press…

Agree, OP. This is a real crisis that I feel it's being significantly down played. When the military was introduced in Scotland a military spokesperson was clear that this was not sustainable long term. That was a few months ago.

I think what people don't realise is that it's not necessarily medically trained personell involved and standards of care, and staff and patient safety are at risk due to the situation. I started a thread about this a few weeks ago but I got no replies. Basically in Scotland instead of two trained personell per ambulance, the proposal is that many ambulances will only have a trainee and military driver (NOT MEDIC). www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-59780940. Nobody is talking about this.

The system is currently struggeling to the extent that routine precedures have been cancelled in many hospitals, patients urged to make our own way to A&E and yesterday a major hospital in Glasgow asked people not to go to A&E at all unless it's life-or-death! Access to GP services is limited and it's a good 40 minutes hold just to get through to the call handler on 111.

I'm not sure what can be done about it though. Bringing in restrictions won't help as the people likely to end up in hospital will aready be infected. We've reduced isolation time as much as is possible while trying to manage transmission.

We're at the brink of having no access to medical care and I think it's terrifying. I wonder if people just don't want to think about it because the reality is too frightening?

What are they actually doing?

Yes, the Defence Medical Services has trained HCPs who would (in theory at least) be immediately deployable into clinical roles, but is that what the deployments are for? Is it DMS, or is it just people who can be moved anywhere and put into any sort of accommodation who could do any of the many other roles that go in to the running of a hospital (porters, security, logistics, janitors, switchboard, admin etc)

Military aid to the civil authorities is regularly used in times of unusual pressure (foot and mouth, floods, Olympic security, fire service strikes, augmenting police after terrorist incidents etc) and the number of NHS staff (not just clinicians) off such is a highly unusual pressure

@ANameChangeAgain

I suppose my concern is that things have got this bad and the PM isn't admitting it or being held to account We are in an unusual and emergency situation, the whole world is in the same boat. Focus though needs to be on training new doctors and nurses, and incentives for job retention. Training for new health professionals takes years, so I don't think the situation will be changing any time soon.

Absolutely this

Though it should never have got this bad in the first place.

"I don't think the situation will be changing any time soon".

Yes, the consequence will be felt for many years to come. With all the delayed screening and treatments, many people 10 years from now will have more illness, imparied quality of life, and a shorter life expectancy than they would have had pre pandemic .

@ANameChangeAgain

I think its fantastic (not NHS staff shortages, but the fact that we have a highly trained, world wide respected military to be proud of, who we can call on in times such as these). We should be shouting about this more, singing their praises from the roof tops.

I agree

@mpsw

what are they actually doing?

In the case of the latest announcement regarding support in London it’s 40 Defence medics and 160 general duties personnel.

This morning’s UK Gov press release on the subject here:

www.gov.uk/government/news/two-hundred-armed-forces-personnel-to-support-nhs-hospitals-in-london

I’d agree aid to the Civil power/civil authorities has been regularly used over the years and as you rightly point it has happened for a variety of reasons.

The problem that often gets missed is that the size of HM Forces has shrunk drastically over the few decades but when push gets to shove we get back to politicians calling for the Army to be called in…….

Some of the replies of this thread are bizarre.

Our army are great and highly trained, but it isn’t their responsibility to be parachuted into everything the government has broken. They can’t be responsible for driving ambulances and fire engines and HGVs and provide healthcare.

London is ahead of everywhere else with the omicron wave. Whatever happens there is coming to a hospital near you soon and I doubt we’ve got enough army personnel left to staff every hospital in the country.

This is an enormous sign of government failure and I agree that the media are not highlighting this enough. People are already dying because the government has pushed the healthcare system to breaking point for months. Now it’s going to be pushed beyond that because the government ignored the experts that told them this was going to happen and decided to push through. We shouldn’t be acting as though that’s a perfectly normal or positive thing to be happening.

I think it's absolutely shit and there should be absolute outrage over it. This government has completely broken our already fragile healthcare system and I hope they'll be held accountable. It's shocking.

I'm grateful that there are trained armed services personnel able to help. I'm furious that it's necessary.

Everyone knows there are massive staff shortages and it’s great that the military are able to step on and help.

You'd be surprised. My (Tory voting, Sun reading) brother states the only reason there aren't enough nurses is because they're all sat at home waiting to be offered higher paid agency shifts. Because that's what his choice of media has told him, nurses are greedy and would rather sit at home earning nothing(!) than work for the NHS. He's not alone in his thinking.

I'm not sure why the priority seems to be London hospitals .I thought London had peaked and that Northern hospitals were under more pressure .Unless it's a delayed response ,like the personnel driving tankers to deliver fuel after the event .

And I think the vagueness of the term "medics" being used is disturbing .Not trained doctors ?

Of course I'm worried by how stretched NHS is ,but I'm also worried that we don't know enough about what is going on .I would have thought the media would be making a great deal more of this than they are .

I'm not sure why the priority seems to be London hospitals .I thought London had peaked

The number of cases has possibly peaked (it's only a week since NY mixing, and any effects of schools return will be another week or so to show up)

The number of hospital admissions continues to rise

data.london.gov.uk/dataset/coronavirus--covid-19--cases

Another interesting bit of that report (not really related to this thread though) is the heat map of weekly cases per 100,000 - and how a new highly transmissible variant arrives and explodes in numbers in such a short time. I was wondering if there was a lesson there for the planners - light/no restrictions most of the time, short but drastic when there's a need. Because as noted by other posters, we probably can't keep using the military.