I'm sorry this is needed. Too many people, too jaded by this last year aren't looking at pandemic health facts. View points are over simplified. NHS staff are not say twiddling thumbs. Neither are we dealing with a cold, or some flu strain. And this is global. (Think how hard it is to get any politician to agree with another. And we're not talking just within this country. There is high level global agreement this pandemic IS happening)
Hospitals are not empty.
In a normal situation, with a regularly functioning hospital a large proportion of space is needed for patients & visitors to wait for their appointments so time with the specialists, consultants etc is maximised.
What's going on in this pandemic is that the patients that need hospital attention are usually are too sick for a 5 minute outpatient appointment. What they need is specialist specific care, & oxygen support. And often if they are sick enough for hospital, they need care for several days at least, sometimes weeks. Oxygen support is provided by a piped system, and highly flammable, so is therefore available in set places, "bed spaces". It isn't routinely available in out patients.
So, you will see quiet spaces in the hospital, because anything that can be cancelled, or reduced back has been changed. ANY available staff are being redeployed within the hospital, to areas where sick patients need the treatment. So instead of outpatients where the ratio might be 10 staff to 100 patients for a 4 hour clinic, and the same 10 staff then see another 100 patients for a second 4 hour clinic, ill patients require about 20 staff to 10 patients, sometimes sufficiently higher staff levels to fewer patients and for 24 hours of every day, so you need a minimum of 2 or 3 sets of staff for each and every day. Suddenly the ratios are very different.
The reason nightingale hospitals are not yet used is that they are set up for recovering, re-cooperating patients when staffing levels can be lower. However, there isn't a spare buffer of staff, that can magically resource it. All staff that can work are already working, in the regular NHS hospitals, or their usual jobs. Staff are being moved between hospitals, even between towns. Even if that's not their employer.
Please stop saying this isn't a crisis. Please stop saying this is just a seasonal flu. This is the biggest health crisis we've seen in at least 100 years. A lot of what we're being asked to do is to reduce the number of us that get sick all at once. So there's enough specialist care & oxygen stations to be available to those of us that need it.
And anyone in or linked to the NHS has been bent double dealing with this pandemic for almost a year. Please stop bashing the under resourced, tired healthcare professionals giving their all.
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Originally Posted by Letters
