COVID19 Intensive care choices

[Whorty]

Loads of beds in the Nightingale hospitals, we're never going to run out of beds

[Old Greg]

Loads of beds in the Nightingale hospitals, we're never going to run out of beds

Is there the right number of staff with the right skills?

[Hobosapien]

Imagine a tramp is in intensive care with COVID. All other intensive care beds are full. A young doctor is in urgent need of care. Do you remove the tramp to die or leave the doctor to die?

Insufficient data.

Is the tramp also a doctor who tried to come out of retirement to help with covid but was knocked back by all the red tape?

Is the tramp significantly younger than the doctor?

What is wrong with the 'tramp' hobo lifestyle anyway?

[minestrone]

The tramp would not have got in. The same decision would have been made, just at a different point in the funnel.

[minestrone]

Can we go back in time and kill the tramp as a baby?

[Old Greg]

Can we go back in time and kill the tramp as a baby?

But then you’ll never have existed to go back in time.

[minestrone]

Typically untrue if you are talking about ICU beds. The patient will be brought to ED and ventilated in ED while an ICU bed is found or opened, or exceptionally an alternative location found like a theatre suite. The patient may ultimately be conveyed ventilated to another hospital where an ICU bed is available.

Are all ICU patients ventilated?

[Whorty]

Is there the right number of staff with the right skills?

Of course, there must be, else why would all that PR gone into setting them up in the first place

[eek]

Of course, there must be, else why would all that PR gone into setting them up in the first place

Because the Government thought that they could be staffed after a few weeks training (after all you don’t need experts).

then it turned out that years of training was required

[Lockhouse]

My wife used to have that job as administrative head of a surgical unit - deciding which patients got treated and which ones didn't. Targets made a lot of that a farce - people would get bumped from serious surgical lists because someone with an ingrowing toenail would breach the waiting list target if they weren't. In the end it did my wife in and she left with stress related stuff that has affected her permanently.

A lot of the issues in hospitals are caused by targets and breach times. I accept there needs to be some sort of holding to account but I'm not convinced that's the way to do it.