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FunkyDunc - as a doctor in the frontline I know for a fact PPE is almost non-existent in some hospitals. We are being asked to go in with simple surgical masks in many places simply as there isn't any higher grade PPE available. People comparing it to Chernobyl where soldiers were ordered to run into the fire despite no radioactive protection. You are not on the sharp end of all this and would be best served to listen properly to those who are. Your statements to not indicate you have a real grip on what frontline staff are going through and preparing to go through. Be careful of defending the indifensible.
In our Trust there are 3 meetings per day, 7 days per week now where any H&S concerns are resolved.
As long as there's plenty of meetings we all know we're safe.
Let's face it, you can never have too many meetings.
I think the Guys above have confirmed my fear. My point is that in most circumstances, if you don't have the PPE or its not safe to do something you just don't do it. In the current circumstance the NHS staff have no option but to carry on working without all the PPE or without the necessary breaks or prospect of being relieved on shifts that are already too long/frequent. If they say no then someone else will have to step in and face the same risk or patients will suffer/die.
My wife is not long in from a nightshift in CCU.
Extra PPE is non existent for all but ITU.
She and some colleagues had a mask fitting a couple of weeks ago for the proper masks (sorry, not sure on the terminology!) They all failed, but one.
The next step after that was basically, meh. Radio silence on it since.
They'll all get stuck in and get on with it, but preparation to actually keep staff healthy and available to work has been woeful.
The lack of PPE seems a common problem/issue.
My wife (nurse) has 4 patients on her ward confirmed as having the coronavirus, yet they are not in isolation from other patients, there is no testing for staff, and there is no PPE for the staff caring for them.
As gowerboy correctly states, NHS staff have no option but to carry on and do the job. Its not like some emergency services who will not put themselves at risk if they do not have the correct breathing apparatus to go into a building, NHS staff have no such safety net.
Just been sent this
My wife is still trying to resolve the conflict between “You must not see these patients without wearing this PPE” and “We haven’t got any of that PPE for you”.
Slopping sound of poo hitting the fan in pharmacy land. Public going mad over ordering worse than at Christmas time. Script numbers three times what I’d normally expect at this time of year.
No deliveries from wholesale on Thursday then everything turned up on Friday along with normal order. Wholesales say there’s plenty of stock in the system but can’t fit it all in the vans at once. They’re going to be dropping to once a day deliveries instead of two. Doesn’t sound bad but if we urgently need a non stock item it’s now next day instead of same day.
Only just finished labelling Thursday’s script pick up on Friday night, god only knows when they’ll be assembled if we’ve even the stock.
Fed up of customers coming in looking for inhalers then saying that it’s ok because they still have two boxes left!
At least the health board have seen sense and let us reduce our patient facing hours. Currently doors closed for first hour and last half to let us getting caught up without dealing with people looking for loo roll or hand sanitiser.
Just finished six days straight of this and now looking forward to a few days off, but not convinced I won’t get called in for double cover on Monday.
As long as there’s plenty of meetings we all know we’re safe.
Let’s face it, you can never have too many meetings.
Oh so you would rather we didnt check in that staff have the correct PPE (where possible) and that oxygen supplies are still sufficient, that ward reconfigurations happen at the right time to avoid contamination?
Mrs_H is on the covid ward tonight.
I must confess to being a trifle concerned.
I guess I'll find out how it went tomorrow morning.
My neighbour is self isolating with CV-19 after contracting it on the local CV-19 ward at Addenbrookes. Although not tested, but given she was dealing with CV-19 patients, pretty likely she has it. Does suggest PPE isn't really working given this is the calm before the storm. Also seems very odd they're asking all the retired doctors/nurses to come back and take her place given their ages and heightened risk of dieing...
Well daughter just finished a shift. Over 12 hours today, yesterday, day before... you get the picture. She say the PPE feels inadequate despite reassurances. A plastic piny and a cloth face mask. Hell, she'd do better to use the air fed masks that asbestos workers use. Nowhere proper to change/shower - yet their Facilities people don't hire a unit in the car park so they use a spare ward shower. They have to treat very ill patients and deal with stressed family members with the complication that they are now potential C19 vectors... surely the family liaison could be taken over by a seconded social worker or similar. She says student nurses are staying on and are being relied on.
I am of course speaking as an onlooker and I have no experience of a clinical setting, but I have managed incidents for years and understand the principles of risk management. Something feels wrong about this.
Gowerboy - the problem with healthcare is that you cannot walk away even if the risk assessment / ppe is crap. Building a building and the risks are two high you down tools. But in healthcare you cannot.
I hope when this shit storm is all done anyone who has put themselves on the front line gets the recognition they deserve from this country
Seriously folks, it's truly humbling the work you are doing..
Footflaps - the fact they are asking generally older retired NHS staff shows the gravity of the situation. Also the measures a Tory government has taken to try and prop up livelihoods and the entire system, basically. Your neighbour could easily have contracted it out with work I guess.
Gowerboy - this is the reality. Staff are/will be going above and beyond. Council I work for is creating a bank of workers who are not ‘essential front line’ normally but can redeployed/quickly retrained to provide essential services. For instance, a council plumber delivering medication to the elderly.
Tj. I know. That's exactly my point. You nurses, doctors, HCSW deserve better precisely because you can't say no.
Without even thinking about the incident planning that hasn't happened as that ship has sailed, what worries me as an involved bystander is that, right now, some of the issues are still sortable. Not all of course but some. Not easy I know, but not impossible either.
Wales has Silver/Tactical commands set up for this incident. What the hell are they doing about the wellbeing of their most important, vulnerable and valuable assets.
I recognise that talk is easy and I declare a strong interest here, but I wish it my girls felt like someone 'had their back'.
As long as there’s plenty of meetings we all know we’re safe.
Let’s face it, you can never have too many meetings.
Taken off the front line last week, this weekend and next week to have “plenty of meetings” about eg how we are going to choose which patients will and won’t get care when we are overwhelmed, which services to cut first because we don’t have any staff without people dying, making sure people wont go without life saving drugs because they haven’t had blood tests or there aren't the staff to get it to them, where we are going to put the numbers of bodies we are told to expect and how we are going to support each other through the trauma healthcare staff are suffering in Italy and Spain. Perhaps we shouldn’t be bothering Notmyrealname and you could just pop along to sort it all out for us.
Guys - please don't bicker on this thread. Thanks.
Funky Dunc - perhaps unintentionally - made it sound like everything was under control and this is at odds with what those on the front line were seeing.
But please - this thread is for mutual support
Funky Dunc – perhaps unintentionally – made it sound like everything was under control and this is at odds with what those on the front line were seeing.
I can obviously only comment on my views from the hospital I work in, and the one Mrs FD works in. We are trying our hardest to ‘do the right thing’ for our front line staff, and so far on the whole it is working, speaking with front line staff in my hospital. Unfortunately though it appears this will change in the coming week.
Having just read a doctors account in London though, what is coming sounds horrific.
I'm really worried about my best friend.
She's a senior occupational therapist. She's a very strong person but even I feel she is about to crumble.
She's trying to balance working 6 days a week with bringing up 2 boys (separated husband is absolutely useless).
She can no longer get help from her parents (over 70yrs of age) because they are sensibly staying indoors. She is missing them and is worrying about them. Her father is 83 and has had cancer. Getting the shopping she needs has been difficult too.
The large hospital she works in, is closing the outpatients dept and retraining all the medical staff to work on the wards.
She already works on the wards (but not yet with CV patients) and has in the past 12 months worked in A&E due to staff shortages.
She and her colleagues are the very backbone of the NHS and need to be supported.
This last few days she hasn't even had time to answer my texts (for help).
tpbiker
Member
I hope when this shit storm is all done anyone who has put themselves on the front line gets the recognition they deserve from this country
I very much doubt it. The New Year's Honours list will be full of those higher management types who self isolated and skyped throughout this crisis getting Knighthoods and CBE's ... Maybe a handful of nurses will get the lower baubles.
Those in our social work team were informed last week that we could/would be redeployed to cover care agency staff when their numbers start depleting.
@devbrix, It's a comment borne out of frustration having heard this pretty much non stop from the management at my trust the past couple of weeks. Despite all the meetings we're told they're having, nothing is improving, in fact things are getting much worse but we still get to see and hear them in the local press telling us how things are going well and we don't have kit shortages etc despite hundreds if not thousands of frontline staff knowing otherwise.
Apologies if you think it was aimed at you, it certainly wasn't. Good luck with what you're doing though as it sounds like you'll need it over the coming weeks.
My wife is still trying to resolve the conflict between “You must not see these patients without wearing this PPE” and “We haven’t got any of that PPE for you”.
That will be a recurring theme. When the dust settles on this there needs to be a day of reckoning for the political shits who have run the NHS down year by year, always on the cheap, always to the bare minimum then minus another 10%, always preying on the altruistic motivations that make people want to work in it.
Over the years junior doctors have taken on responsibilities that should belong to surgeons, nurses have taken on responsibilities that should belong to junior doctors and so on. Even receptionists in hospitals have roles that would have made people’s jaws hit the floor in the 1980s. Funnily enough their wages have not risen to compensate, though.
It’s not just the NHS either. Police and firefighters are not much different.
I’m an Occupational Therapist - Community Neuro Rehab. Still working with our normal caseload last week - this is likely to change next week to only urgent visits. As such I am requesting that I can support my local big acute hospital out on the wards supporting discharges and trying to clear beds. I’ve worked with them before, and my friends there are asking for a show of hands for some additional numbers. Weirdly, I am looking forward to getting back into the acute setting and getting stuck in where I can during this crisis.
Adam
Healthcare Assistant here, our Orthopaedic trauma ward has been reduced from 5 bays for Orthopaedics to 3 and the bottom two bays are for suspected Covid 19 patients. We have blocked it off and reduced our visiting rules to 1 person per patient for 1 hour only.
We got a fit test for Ffp3 masks on Friday, mine seemed to work during the test of having some obnoxious tasting liquid sprayed in my face first, then having the mask fitted whilst being sprayed again.
But I’ve not seen one available yet since, just regular surgical masks.
We take it in turns each shift to do the COVID bays.
Personally I’m not worried about me but I worry about my family getting it due to peoples not taking it seriously enough.
Each meeting I go to leaves me with an ever increasing sense of doom. Waiting for a battle at dawn the whistle to sound and go over the top.
Then there are the pictures of loads of people out on the hills when we are struggling to keep mountain rescue viable.
Ripping half a hospital apart to build a COVID (Ebola) assessment unit that will create a high viral load zone to be run with basic PPE and risk a cytokine crisis.
And today the AED patient with the Stanley knife lac on her leg
Me “ you on a work shut down doing diy?”
Her “no I’m off on two weeks self isolation”..
You couldn’t make it up
Echo last post, the mood has changed in our hospital as of yesterday.
A lot of planning happened last week, we are by no where near ready but better than we were, what is normally a busy acute hospital is like a ghost town. Has anyone else noticed that or the ‘normal’ sick people have just disappeared?
Day by day the numbers of very sick COVID19 is going up. I spoke to a few consultants yesterday and their normal self confidence/bordering on arrogance has gone. They are more fearful of what’s coming and very much a sense going over the parapet.
We are starting to send home all none essential staff, not only for their safety, but so that they can come back in when staff start to go off sick (although large numbers are doing so already)
Mrs FD has had to tell a patient yesterday that more than likely they will not unfortunately be able to have their elective surgery, and the consequence of that is that if they are ‘lucky’ it means in a few weeks time they will end up loosing their leg, or ‘unlucky’ die. As a surgeon she has never had to tell a patient that before.
I’m just about to head in for another long day, and I count myself as being fortunate as I am not working on the frontline.
😞
Mrs FD has had to tell a patient yesterday that more than likely they will not unfortunately be able to have their elective surgery, and the consequence of that is that if they are ‘lucky’ it means in a few weeks time they will end up loosing their leg, or ‘unlucky’ die. As a surgeon she has never had to tell a patient that before
My son is a surgeon, and also explained that necessary operations that over 75 year olds were getting as routine the other week have now been cancelled; so I guess they pretty much doomed!
My wife is an agency nurse; last week she worked what is now called the covid-ward, and today goes to a new hospital. She was had no testing to see if she is carrying the virus - in fact she was told because she is not NHS she won't get it unless she becomes ill and her agency kindly offered to test her if she paid £200 ..
The people making the decisions safely in the background do not have a clue.
Wife's an itu doc in major centre - similar tales as elsewhere of poor supply of ppe. Only couple cases so far thankfully, but building. She's Busy training other specialists to help with covid as theirs won't be priority / busy areas so 2ill be retasked.
Shes mildly terrified about whole thing and stressed about bringing it home to our 10 month old. I work from home as occ health nurse and will likely have to stop to look after our lad as her rota is about to go mental. Conflicted as ex-itu nurse and could potentially help, but no family in England to look after lad. Priority is him, and I guess 1 of us on front line with the sickest in hospital is a big enough sacrifice??? Dunno???
Wifes youngest sister is a nurse, she usually works on palliative care ward in a provincial London hospital. She says if you've got symptoms try and get to St Thomas's or Kings - if you end up at her hospital you'll probably die.
Her other sister is a kids speech therapist - her usual work has been cancelled, shes's currently at home self isolating with a persistent cough but watching training videos on-line as directed by work as she'll be helping out on a ward when she goes back to work.
She also has a very difficult (violent) 14 year old son who's mental health provision has been frozen. I think i'd rather be self-isolating with a hungry tiger than him.
I guess 1 of us on front line with the sickest in hospital is a big enough sacrifice??? Dunno???
I would say so. We all have our limits and I think mine might be tested.
I'm not a healthcare worker at all. Reading this thread is quite sobering. That's all I've got.
As an office seat shining IT contractor, I can’t begin to imagine how you guys do it. Just incredibly humbling
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As an office seat shining IT contractor, I can’t begin to imagine how you guys do it. Just incredibly humbling
I approve this message
Plus 1
A friend is an ITU nurse. She is sounding increasingly, seriously, worried. That scares me more than anything else.
At the start of last nights shift there was near 60 beds in the medical directorate in the hospital. Unheard of these days.
People are staying away.
The Corona ward was brimming. The staff had their lovely rubbish pinny and basic surgical face mask to deal with it all.
Ward managers are telling us that matrons and higher are not even stepping over the threshold whilst telling the fodder "not to worry" and to deal with it.
My friend as a heart failure nurse specialist in the community had 36 referrals in one day as the hospitals empty out
My wife as a palliative care nurse specialist in the community has had her case load double in a day.
Will not be long and the beds will be full. ED will be full as the community services will not cope and everyone will be readmitted.
Palliative Care Specialist Pharmacist. Work at Acute Trust and Hospices. Concerns really ramping up about potential shortages of key end of life medicines and also syringe drivers.
Yesterday was 9-5 at hospital trying to make plans and then at home after dinner was up until gone midnight last night basically writing guidelines for second / third / fourth / fifth line options we could use for end of life symptom control if we run out of standard treatment options. Back in today for more of the same including linking in with primary care to support GPs and community teams with the same for those patients who won’t get into hospital. Sobering.
I'm not frontline, just in supporting IT for 96 GP Practices. I am genuinely in awe of frontline staff, worried for them, concerned for them, half wishing I was qualified enough to be in there lending a more meaningful hand and at the same time half glad I'm not because I'm shitting it enough with what's being asked of me and my team and we're just the supporting cast.
We've been flat out for 3 weeks now just working on getting several hundred extra laptops imaged and out with remote working capability so GP staff can self-isolate if needed, and we've had other practice staff bring in laptops they're having problems with for repair and re-image. No real PPE needed, but still a box of latex gloves and a bucket of isoclene wipes to wipe down every device before we touch anything. Team members who are immunocompromised have been working from home dealing with standard support calls as much as they can - we can remote on to some devices where needed. Other engineers still have to go to GP practices if a call dictates it. The rest of us are working in the same office, knowing if one of us gets the virus, chances are we all do.
From one of the people who has the minor luxury of sheltering in the backrooms, my heart and my respect to all of the frontline teams. We're all taking a kicking at the moment, hopefully we can collectively pull through it relatively unscathed.
I’m not a healthcare worker at all. Reading this thread is quite sobering. That’s all I’ve got.
Agree
I've posted on this thread already and essentially I'm a community nurse, and I've pretty much accepted I will probably get the virus. I'm pretty confident I would survive it, but my 12 year old has bad asthma, and whilst I am pretty confident she would survive she could have a rough trot with it. Following the school closure, we have ended up making some really difficult choices with one of our neighbour's. We already do abit of shared child care, so our kids spend a lot of time together. My neighbour is a copper, and his wife and one of his kids are also in the vulnerable groups.
So as my youngest also has autism, my neighbour's wife and two kids have moved into our house to isolate. And I've moved in theirs alongside my middle adult daughter and the dog, Barry. My neighbour also feels as a copper he will get it, and was worried about bringing it home so oddly this all made sense. Luckily his wife is a teaching assistant so she is already on with the home teaching.
Lots of what's app video calling going on,and I spend quite a lot of time sat on my front garden wall talking to my youngest. I'm sure I might be seen as some disaster fapper, and whilst on paper the arrangements sound a winner, it's pretty hard. Luckily we are only yards away house wise, but this could go on for months, it's just really weird and yeah, I'm finding it pretty hard.
I must say my fears and my risks have been rather put in perspective by this thread. I am not in anything like as risky or difficult position as some.
If I had been right on the frontline instead of somewhere nearby I really do not know how I would cope. I guess "one foot in front of the other"
Awesome what some folk are doing
As a nurse I feel appreciated more than at any time in my career- by the public, I'm not so happy with the government, there's a huge lack of essential PPE.
I'd like to thank all the essential workers who are less appreciated, particularly the shopworkers who told me yesterday that they are getting abuse from customers who come into their shop to buy essentials, then berate them for selling non-essentials. Like its their decision. They are putting themselves in the line of germy fire for us, be nice to them.
I'm sat at home with symptoms of CV, but not being tested!!
Not unwell as such - I'd normally just go in - but not had any illness for months so bit co-incidental to have cough and mild flu now. TBH I hope it is the CV and I go back to work immune.
I'm a cancer surgeon so all our work is currently suspended. Just phoning patients from home who were due to come in to inform them that their treatment has been put on hold. Hopefully they will be OK and we can catch up when this settles down.
Looking forward to returning to work in a week or so just as the 5h1t hits the fan in our part of the world.
I am not a healthcare professional but my wife is. She is currently in a community setting, but will very likely be redeployed soon.
The stories coming out of the sharp end of acute care are frightening.
The scenes from Italy a couple of weeks ago are happening right now in a hospital near you.
Make no mistake, in these places, things are going to get a lot worse before they even begin to slow down their rate of increase let alone slow down full stop.
ICU in our city hospital is full and we are on a shallow part of the curve right now. This is not a London hospital.
When this is over there are going to be health workers carrying scenes around in their heads that they would give anything to be rid of. They need our help now to limit the spread but they will need looking after later on too.
A stint in any hospital with acute care functions will be like a tour of duty.
Any updates on the situation from inside hospitals and on ambulances?
I'm available via the temporary register (Paramedic) but surprisingly haven't been contacted yet so particularly keen to know what's happening around Aberdeen/shire.
When this is over there are going to be health workers carrying scenes around in their heads that they would give anything to be rid of. They need our help now to limit the spread but they will need looking after later on too.
This inspades! I have been in a couple of situations in my career where a number of deaths of my patients in a short space of time have affected me. There is going to be PTSD type trauma for a lot of staff. It will be a test for the government / NHS bosses how this is dealt with. Will counselling be made available for these staff?