Nightingale Hospitals

LeeTublin

Member
Been reading they are full of all the latest equipment but have hardly any patients. Talk of using them to treat the people who have had operations cancelled due to coronavirus. Are they an unnecessary expense ?
 
Do you think the Conservative Government will keep them on after the Coronavirus crisis and take on new staff to reduce the waiting lists? Daft question!
 
There were reports that there is a shortage of ICU nurses. Thankfully we seem to be surviving without them.

We're experiencing 800 deaths per day just in hospitals. We can't use the Nightingale facilities because (a) hospitals have to provide staff for any patients they send, and (b) they won't treat serious cases there.

We aren't 'surviving'. This is a full blown catastrophe that the media are complicit in playing down. The FT reckon we're on 40k plus deaths when you include Care Homes. It's horrendous.

We're being gaslit on a daily basis by the same people who lied their way to Brexit and then lied their way to a parliamentary majority.

If this isn't enough to convince people that someting is rotten in the state of Denmark then we might as well give up. The lunatics are cheerleading for the other lunatics running the asylum.
 
We're being gaslit on a daily basis by the same people who lied their way to Brexit and then lied their way to a parliamentary majority.

I've heard the CMO etc admit on a number of occasions that the death numbers they quote are only from hospitals, I assume because due to crap testing, they're the only accurate measure. I believe he did say something about the number being comparable to how other countries report - though that may not be true now. The outcry in other countries has seen sudden adjustments to death numbers.

The problem is the time taken to capture the statistics. Hospitals are linked into PHE stats recording and the data is transmitted on a daily basis. Whereas someone issuing a death certificate in a care home is not, and the data is evidently returned to the Office of National Statistics who publish monthly summaries (at least monthly). See the link below for March.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...d19englandandwales/deathsoccurringinmarch2020

The truth is we have no idea what the accurate total of deaths from Covid-19 are. And we won't really ever know. What we will be able to see is the increase in deaths for the year when the stats are calculated in 2021. Only then will we have an idea how deadly has been this virus.

The fact is the public health infrastructure in the UK has been an absolute disaster in the face of this virus. They were unprepared in every way imaginable. But with one or two notable exceptions so was just about every other country on earth. The issue is the time it has taken for the leadership in these organisations to realise they couldn't manage on their own.
 
Been reading they are full of all the latest equipment but have hardly any patients. Talk of using them to treat the people who have had operations cancelled due to coronavirus. Are they an unnecessary expense ?

Don’t think they can be slammed as an unnecessary expenses.

Think most would have agreed that it would be better to be over-prepared as we never knew how bad we would be hit
 
Nightingale Hospitals are needed but we do not have the ITU staff available to make use of them, they currently serve two purposes, one the Government were seen to be innovative and doing something positive by increasing the number of ITU beds that are available and secondly because they are not being used they create the illusion that the virus is being managed well and we have done better than anticipated. See below

I know hundreds of people are dying each day but is the fact these Nightingale Hospitals are hardly needed show this hasn't been as bad as some feared ?


I initially thought that this was one of the things that the government had got right and done well, however as days have passed I have realised that they are political totems, either built deliberately for the political reasons I mentioned above or, given the way that policy has been handled on other matters, built in haste without looking at the infrastructural shortfall in staffing and PPE etc, we are currently unable to make practical use of them and sadly another example of misuse or misjudgement of resources that could and should have been deployed towards something that was having a bigger impact.

The government either acted in good faith but without any concept of the staffing resources required to make the Nightingale Hospitals work which is incompetence or they have been built purely as a political tool, to increase the notional ITU bed figures and give the impression that because they are not in use the Government has done a good job in controlling the pandemic, which the figures indicate is not the case.
 
Last edited:
To counter the above and to get a total understanding, how many hospitals do not have enough ventilators currently?

James cook for examples has had 2 wards designated that it hasn’t even had to use. Middlesbrough were told is a hotspot
 
To counter the above and to get a total understanding, how many hospitals do not have enough ventilators currently?

James cook for examples has had 2 wards designated that it hasn’t even had to use. Middlesbrough were told is a hotspot
Many doctors around the world are using ventilation as a last resort now arent they? Thought they were using the machines that force oxygen in instead?
 
We would all do many things differently with the benefit of 20-20 vision hindsight. This pandemic is a once in a century event for which there is no precedent but perhaps better planning, earlier, may have saved some of the 20,000+ tragic lives already lost. It really is a heinous disease and the government and it's ministers actions will be damned if they do and damned if they don't by amateur armchair epidemiologists

#UTB
 
We would all do many things differently with the benefit of 20-20 vision hindsight. This pandemic is a once in a century event for which there is no precedent but perhaps better planning, earlier, may have saved some of the 20,000+ tragic lives already lost. It really is a heinous disease and the government and it's ministers actions will be damned if they do and damned if they don't by amateur armchair epidemiologists

#UTB
Agree with a large part of that Alan, and the last thing I am is a Tory.
 
To counter the above and to get a total understanding, how many hospitals do not have enough ventilators currently?

James cook for examples has had 2 wards designated that it hasn’t even had to use. Middlesbrough were told is a hotspot

Which 2 COVID wards weren’t used Gaz, wife’s best friend is in charge of one of the 4 Covid ICU wards at JCUH and they’re all still relatively busy but flattening out after the peak around 2 weeks ago ? However she did say that they couldn’t work at full capacity now anyway as there aren’t enough drugs needed to incapacitate the lungs to fit intrusive ventilation, which is becoming a cause for concern or was on Thursday when she last spoke to my Mrs.
 
We would all do many things differently with the benefit of 20-20 vision hindsight. This pandemic is a once in a century event for which there is no precedent but perhaps better planning, earlier, may have saved some of the 20,000+ tragic lives already lost. It really is a heinous disease and the government and it's ministers actions will be damned if they do and damned if they don't by amateur armchair epidemiologists

#UTB

Whilst I agree with much of what you say and obviously mistakes will be made there does need to be accountancy for what has happened, what went right and what went wrong, we had a two week head start on Italy on this pandemic and whilst it was impossible to predict the scale of the infection, knowing your medical staffing capacity was something, I would have though, would be a high priority in any action plan.

What I don’t understand is why, if they are not needed, we are continuing down this route, with plans to open another 3 in Bristol, Exeter and Washington, it seems counterintuitive given the imminent easing in lockdown measures.
 
Which 2 COVID wards weren’t used Gaz, wife’s best friend is in charge of one of the 4 Covid ICU wards at JCUH and they’re all still relatively busy but flattening out after the peak around 2 weeks ago ? However she did say that they couldn’t work at full capacity now anyway as there aren’t enough drugs needed to incapacitate the lungs to fit intrusive ventilation, which is becoming a cause for concern or was on Thursday when she last spoke to my Mrs.
Wards 7 and 8 have been deep cleaned this week and 'downgraded from 'an ICU status.
Both wards are now used as recovery wards for those that through the dangerous state of covid-19.
 
Whilst I agree with much of what you say and obviously mistakes will be made there does need to be accountancy for what has happened, what went right and what went wrong, we had a two week head start on Italy on this pandemic and whilst it was impossible to predict the scale of the infection, knowing your medical staffing capacity was something, I would have though, would be a high priority in any action plan.

What I don’t understand is why, if they are not needed, we are continuing down this route, with plans to open another 3 in Bristol, Exeter and Washington, it seems counterintuitive given the imminent easing in lockdown measures.
Agree, if they aren’t being used, it’s a contradiction to press ahead with opening up more unless there is a plan to move future virus cases away from the main hospitals, but if there is why not say that? And on this business of it being a once in a lifetime event nobody could have predicted blah, blah, yes it is but the Government can look sensible and measured. I thought a few weeks back that it was some Dominic Cummings/Boris Johnson plan to deliberately look desperate, reactive and panicked in the face of an unstoppable enemy but I’ve realised since it’s because they really do not have a clue what they are doing. The NHS, businesses and the general public are leading on all fronts, the Government is floundering.
 
Which 2 COVID wards weren’t used Gaz, wife’s best friend is in charge of one of the 4 Covid ICU wards at JCUH and they’re all still relatively busy but flattening out after the peak around 2 weeks ago ? However she did say that they couldn’t work at full capacity now anyway as there aren’t enough drugs needed to incapacitate the lungs to fit intrusive ventilation, which is becoming a cause for concern or was on Thursday when she last spoke to my Mrs.

Sorry I think I’ve used ventilator rather than icu in general. I know they haven’t been as busy as expected, my wife works at the hospital. They haven’t been under the strain they were expecting. You also have Richard cree’s blog who has stated they haven’t opened up 2 of the wards yet

I was just wondering if in London for example that intensive care units are at full capacity, and whether nightingale is actually needed. I’ve not seen any reports other than one London hospital being at capacity for icu
 
We would all do many things differently with the benefit of 20-20 vision hindsight. This pandemic is a once in a century event for which there is no precedent but perhaps better planning, earlier, may have saved some of the 20,000+ tragic lives already lost. It really is a heinous disease and the government and it's ministers actions will be damned if they do and damned if they don't by amateur armchair epidemiologists

#UTB
I would agree with that Alan, I can see where posters are coming from & seeing posts above is on a frightening scale
 
If you've ever seen or read anything by Michael Osterholm then you might change your mind on this and other issues.
Look at the Spanish Flu pandemic and you'll see it came in waves. There is no reason to believe that Coronavirus won't be the same so having excess capacity will be needed, particularly through the autumn and winter. Obviously we need to be able to staff this capacity as well and it is very likely that 'flattening the curve' is part of a longer term strategy to buy time to cope with subsequent waves of this pandemic. We can train staff to do all of the long-term jobs needed to cope with this, the nurses, the testers, the contact tracers etc.
We can see from Singapore that things can go from good to bad very quickly if you are not careful so I would urge everyone to consider this stage that we are living in right now as just the first of many. Prepare yourself to go back into!lockdown and some point and it won't come as so much of a shock when it happens. Don't think that once restrictions are lifted that everything will be back to normal.
I don't want to be alarmist or doomladen, but as I said yesterday, public health and the economy are tied together and it is a delicate balance that needs to be struck until we get a vaccine. Only then will we be able to better ensure public health and subsequently expand the economy. Without a vaccine we will still have to perform that balance.
It is easy to focus on the now, but we can't lose sight of the long game.
I'd also suggest people watch Andrew Como, the governor of New York, as he is quite honest in the way he tries to lay out the reality of our futures until we get a vaccine.
 
Back
Top