Kells77 So basically like us most days even without covid then. My Tuesdays used to be turning up at work at 0730 and then dicking around until negotiations about who would get the last ICU bed were over (usually an operation for throat cancer vs an operation for oesophageal cancer). Then we would both get a bed and start our ops at 1030 and then finish really late.
But we have some of the lowest ICU beds per head of population in Europe.
“There’s a bit confusion around that. Maybe SoCal is different, but up here we have the space, the issue is properly trained ICU nurses. They’re also holding off some beds in case of, like, catastrophic car crashes or shootings. It just going to take a ridiculous amount of management and triage.”
Also us every day. We can have more beds but there are not nurses to staff them. A sisngle ICU bed requires 7 WTE nurses. 5000 ICU beds in a nightingale hopspital. Where are you going to magic up the nurses and doctors.
Plus covid is not like polio and a single system disease. You can’t just put on a vent and hope. They get bad stuff going on with multi-organ failure. I haven’t done ICU for 5 years. I reckon I could manage about 15% of the patients we had on our ICU in the peak. I can do blood pressure and ventilation and basic micro. But managing the kidneys and strokes and weird clotting and all the other stuff that people had before they got covid and ended up on ICU would be beyond me. Again, where are you going to magic up that workforce from.
