|
?:abstract
|
-
Intensive care staff are gearing up for another potential rapid increase in their bed base, with NHS England issuing discharge guidance and additional funding to help move medically optimised patients from scarce acute beds to community health and social care support Overcrowding will be disastrous for infection control, but modelling from Edge Health, reported in the Guardian, suggested that over 100 hospital trusts in England would be overwhelmed, at 10% over usual capacity, if a second pandemic surge compounded the usual rise in seasonal admission this winter 5 Even the 90%-plus occupancy in general and acute beds pre-pandemic was too high for safe, flexible bed use, patient flow, and infection control, and it often left patients on trolleys in corridors or ambulances stacked outside 67 It’s surely not something to aspire to now [ ]we must consider the impact on workforce availability when staff are sick, self-isolating, or awaiting covid-19 tests, in a system already struggling with unfilled posts
|
![[This page as RDF]](https://research.tib.eu/covid-19/static/rdf-icon.gif){kind=icon}