How are your hospitals doing?

[yellosoutback]

I don't mean from covid particularly, just in general. I'm off sick from my hospital as of this week, I don't know when I'll feel well enough to return but I have never seen hospital life as bad as it is now.

• 17 hour wait in the ambulances to get into ED
• Wards so over full the day rooms all have multiple beds in them
• Staffing so unsafe, therapy staff are standing down waiting lists and doing basic care with no training or support (and then going off sick as ward staff are struggling to have them on the wards without the necessary skills)
• People leaving in droves due to vaccination mandate and just generally broken so the redeployment is being floated as semi permanent as there's no one to recruit from
• no one applying for any jobs
• Very long stay patients in acute beds as there is no community carers or placements due to significant sickness / isolation with covid
• Covid outbreaks everywhere daily closing of wards. No visitors.
• A lot of people catching covid in hospital on top of the reason they are there are going to the covid ward and quite often dying as it is the last toll on their body.
• managers treating people really badly because of the panic state they are in. Funnily enough - they aren't the ones being redeployed to 1:1 dementia patients who hit constantly without any specialist training to deal with it.
• all therapy teams been told to discharge waiting lists and only see patients if they will die without your input.

I know I'm part of the problem by going off sick but after 2 long years, this is the worse I have ever seen things and I can't do it anymore. Is it everywhere or just my trust?

Whereabouts are you, it sounds awful. I know what you mean, after 2 long years, everyone else having had covid, whilst we have managed to avoid it. My neighbours work in healthcare, so listening to what they say, just doesn’t comprehend with some people.

Wow so different from the outside. We had a routine appointment recently. Hospital seemed quiet, lots of staff around who looked like they had less to do probably due to the gaps between people. We had to wash hands on way in, and had the waiting room to ourselves. Much less waiting than had been in past. Asked not to arrive early and I guess they were staggering people more. Our consultant was off with covid but just saw someone else at planned time. And talked about booking us in for next step soon. Seemed fairly normal, just quieter which we could see must lead to inefficiency.

I work in ED and the main issue at the minute (although this is ever changing) is our exit block, especially if you need a medical bed. Its normal now to be sat in ED 15+ hours. Other specialities arent struggling AS much. We had 33 patients just waiting for a bed to be available last night on top of the other 60 ED patients and the ability to provide good continuing care is very tough when you aren't in a ward environment, its like tetris just to get a patient in a cubicle to give personal cares

Our Trust is amazing at meeting the 15 minute ambulance handover target despite 500+ attendances each day, we hit 95% consistently.

Space is always an issue and social distancing rarely exists.

Covid has tailed off in the last couple of weeks, we had 14 empty hot beds last night but they were sitting on them as the drop of phase 2 has them worrying.

Nurse staffing is 60% agency for the last 18 months, costs a FORTUNE

Covid staff sickness has been tough over the last 4 weeks but fingers crossed its tailing off, partly due to the changes in Trust isolation guidance.

So proud of my staff this past 2 years, their resilience and ability to adapt to change has been admirable