Jennifer Moore 😷Jan 16

"Royal College of Nursing says people ‘routinely coming to harm’ with vital equipment not available and staff too busy

"... the NHS is grappling with one of the worst winter crises in its history. In recent weeks about 20 hospital trusts in England have declared a “critical incident” – an admission that they cannot cope with the demand for care and need help."

Well maybe try not recklessly letting covid and flu run wild across the country!

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jan/16/hospital-patients-corridors-royal-college-of-nursing-report-nhs

#NHS

Hospital patients dying undiscovered in corridors, report on NHS reveals

Royal College of Nursing says people ‘routinely coming to harm’ with vital equipment not available and staff too busy

The Guardian
Show threadJennifer Moore 😷

For example...

• Make flu jabs & covid jabs free for anyone who wants them

• Mandate & fund minimum air quality in hospitals & public buildings

• Mandate & provide FFP3 respi masks in all medical settings

• Fund sick pay for 10 days after a positive covid test

• Subsidise Pluslife quick testing units, or similar, for schools and medical settings

Probably all of that put together would still be cheaper than _not_ doing it!

#NHS #UKPol #AirQuality #SickPay

Jan 16 at 9:11amWeb
Show threadFinal Round Player 😷🇪🇺🍸Jan 16
@unchartedworlds With (one of many) medium, long term goals of increasing convalescent care beds in care homes or cottage hospitals. You can't get more people into the front of the hospital if you can't get patients out the other side when they are well enough to leave.
Show threadFinal Round Player 😷🇪🇺🍸Jan 16
@unchartedworlds One other very short term and relatively easy fix. Make sure that all staff are up to date on all their vax. You can't deal with sick patients if your staff are off sick. And you can't allow patients to pick up disease from your staff. The whole of the NHS should be up at > 90% uptake on all the major vaccines.
Show threadJennifer Moore 😷Jan 16

@jbond

This is a good point in principle, yeah, and certainly applies to measles, flu etc. Not sure it would do much to touch covid transmission, though, because of how quickly that aspect of the current covid vaccines wears off. If I recall correctly, protection against catching it peaks after about 2 weeks and is mostly gone after something like 6 weeks to 3 months, I forget exactly. It's the protection against bad illness which lasts longer.

Show threadFinal Round Player 😷🇪🇺🍸Jan 16
@unchartedworlds In theory, NHS Frontline Healthcare workers were eligible for Flu and Covid vax in the autumn vax campaign. In practice 426,225 got the Covid vax. I believe uptake for both is around 25-30% which is just nuts. You would think it would be an HR, IPC issue with fully organised sessions. In practice, it was a few posters and because it wasn't in the Green Book, GP Surgeries didn't order for their own staff.
Show threadJennifer Moore 😷Jan 16

@jbond

Interesting, I didn't know that! That does seem ridiculously negligent!

... though on par with the overall handling of covid :-/

Show threadPozorvlakJan 16
@jbond @unchartedworlds this happened to my Dad. He was pronounced well enough to leave but still needed nursing care; before this could be put in place he caught pneumonia and died just over a week later. The doctors told us that they try to put people on palliative care in private rooms, but all the private rooms were being used to isolate Covid/RSV/etc patients so he died out on the ward.
Show threadJennifer Moore 😷Jan 16

@pozorvlak

Condolences, and thanks for sharing that. Sad example of the downstream effects on people & families.

@jbond

Show threadFinal Round Player 😷🇪🇺🍸Jan 16

@pozorvlak @unchartedworlds

Sorry for your loss.

Show threadPozorvlakJan 16
@jbond @unchartedworlds thanks :-) He had stage 4 lung cancer so we didn't expect to have much longer with him anyway, but it would have been nice to have had a last Christmas together.
Show threadFinal Round Player 😷🇪🇺🍸Jan 16

@pozorvlak @unchartedworlds

Pneumonia on a death certificate, caught in a hospital, covers an awful lot of possible problems and outcomes It's a pretty common way to go. But "Pneumonia" is more like a set of symptoms than a specific disease. Although there are specific diseases with that in the name.