Nightingale Hospitals

I always thought they could ah w been used to bring down waiting lifts but the staff problem still applies. My sister attended one in Exeter recently so it seems some are being used.

FOI question?

No details given. Here's a rather long link to the article:

goodlawproject.org/two-thirds-of-beds-bought-for-nightingale-hospitals-were-unfit-for-use/?utm_source=Good+Law+Project&utm_campaign=a4eb5d17eb-EMAIL_Investigations_2023_11_03_10_16&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_db5adb9599-8e29602e85-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D&mc_cid=a4eb5d17eb&mc_eid=43c74fef12

Not exactly what I would call evidence.

When the announcement was made about building them I remember saying to DH that they didn't have enough staff to service them properly. My stepdaughter, a consultant said that they didn't have facilities for intensive care either, huge waste of money.

GSM No - not published but I have no doubt that it will be.

Building and furnishing the Nightingale units when there was an overall staff shortage in the NHS does not look like good planning or joined up thinking. They could never have provided additional capacity notwithstanding some occasional minor use. Looks like a panic measure to show Hancock was doing 'something'. A waste of public money. But I doubt the Tories would want to investigate it!

I remembered that the Kings Fund had commissioned some work about the use of Nightingale hospitals.
www.kingsfund.org.uk/blog/2021/04/nhs-nightingale-hospitals-worth-money

By the time they had gone through traditional procurement procedure potentially thousands could have died. If they hadn't built these temporary hospitals people would be complaining that the govt hadn't had them. No win situation. Damned if they did and damned if they didn't.
Staffing is another matter. The army medics could have been deployed just as they were for the vaccine centres.
So easy for armchair critics to be wise after the event.

It’s ok to be wise after the event but it’s us who pay our taxes. So why didn’t they give us a choice or at least a say in how they should be reused.

This may be a silly question, but could they be used to stop so-called 'bed blocking', where patients are cured but need care and convalescence before going home? I'm thinking that they could be staffed by carers rather than qualified nurses, and free up beds for those needing operations. I am not a medic of any description though.

Casdon

I remembered that the Kings Fund had commissioned some work about the use of Nightingale hospitals.
www.kingsfund.org.uk/blog/2021/04/nhs-nightingale-hospitals-worth-money

but unfortunately, there is no magic NHS staffing tree to shake.

That was so obvious to most thinking people at the time. I cannot think why it went ahead. One couldn't help thinking that it was just an expensive propaganda exercise. I wonder who pushed for it. Hopefully we'll find out at the Inquiry progresses.

I'm glad to see from the Kings Fund report that they had some small benefits even if not the one really intended.

The Kings Fund article lays it bare really Doodledog. There just aren’t the staff to run more facilities. They did employ forces medical/clinical personnel in Nightingale hospitals too, but the total non civilian numbers for all the forces is only 8,200, with the remainder being reservists who are mainly NHS staff, so that’s not the answer. The NHS really is on its knees, there are no easy solutions now.

The largest Nightingale hospitals were reported to have 4,000 planned beds and would need 16,000 staff at full capacity

That's just one of the Nightingales.

Are you suggesting, Aveline, that the army would have had enough medical personnel to supply staff in those numbers?

So easy for armchair critics to be wise after the event.

You keep banging on about 'hindsight', Aveline,but if you start looking at the covid inquiry proceedings you find there was a lot of foresight that was ignored...

All the nonsense about it being a completely new situation that had everyone floundering is just that, nonsense.

MaizieD if only you'd been running the country. Everything would have been perfect. No deaths, no wasting of money and the economy booming. 😑

I suspect that in those early desperate days when patients were dying rapidly in Italy, ( I can't remember the exact timing - only that China who presumably knew more of what was coming-started building temporary covid hospitals earlier) there was a very real concern that much of the population would be seriously ill at the same time- and services might need to be very basic indeed.

MaizieD

^So easy for armchair critics to be wise after the event.^

You keep banging on about 'hindsight', Aveline,but if you start looking at the covid inquiry proceedings you find there was a lot of foresight that was ignored...

All the nonsense about it being a completely new situation that had everyone floundering is just that, nonsense.

Lord Bethell (former health minister) - who has more credibility (IMO) than the odious Cummings - said that Boris Johnson did everything that he could to avoid focusing on the pandemic.

“I was aware that during the early days of the pandemic, it was extremely difficult to get any response from Downing Street, and we could see this train coming down the tracks at us.”

“It was put to us there were other priorities including Brexit. I personally found that completely unexplainable and baffling,” he said.

I find it impossible to believe the popular belief that Johnson was "doing his best". What is coming out of the Inquiry is that he caused the chaos and confusion - and the U-turns - because, quite simply, he refused to acknowledge the seriousness of the emerging crisis - hence his choosing to go on holiday as it evolved. His focus was on Brexit and getting it "done" to keep his majority on board... didn't the EU offer a halt in the negotiations for a while so that the government could focus on the crisis? An offer that Johnson refused, because it wasn't in his best interests to accept it. If anyone can convince me otherwise, I'd be willing to listen.

And before anyone says it - of course other governments in other countries made mistakes and got things wrong - and we would've made similar mistakes, but, our government's leader was concerned more about his own personal ambitions than he was about the effects of the crisis on the nation. The low point was him blaming the NHS for the lockdown because they didn't discharge the 'bed-blockers' quickly enough... a problem that has existed for a long time, because of all the spending cuts and the privatisation in the health-care sector imposed by successive Tory governments. Despicable.

There were never enough military doctors and nurses to staff the Nightingales. It's not a matter of hindsight - the Tories would have been well aware of the staffing resources. Just another ploy.

Dickens - absolutely .

I say it again. So easy with 20:20 hindsight.

Aveline

I say it again. So easy with 20:20 hindsight.

I can only assume that you were completely oblivious to everything that was going on at the actual time.

We know that Johnson getting divorced after making his mistress pregnant was also a reason why he was preoccupied in the early days of the pandemic.

Germanshepherdsmum

Not exactly what I would call evidence.

Nor me GSM.