11 min
NHS: A cold Covid winter ahead? Pod Academy
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- Education
With Covid rates remaining stubbornly high and a huge pent-up demand for hospital care, the UK's National Health Service faces a tough winter. Intensive care wards are the canary in the mine, reports Rachael Jolley.
Mark Toshner: We can make beds, but what we can't make are specialised staff to run those beds. The accident and emergency department needs a very specific skill set. And once you run out of their capacity, you don't really have anywhere to turn.
The winter is going to be tough. I think that nobody's envisaging anything other than a really difficult winter and how difficult that is, I think we don't know, but it's going to be difficult.
If you hear people from intensive care, telling you things are tough, that's a really important canary down the mine, because these people are the SAS of clinical staff. And if they are telling you it's tough, you should be listening.
Andrew Conway Morris: My unit is about a third full of COVID. We have spilled out into our higher independency area and we are ventilating patients in the high dependency area.
Rachael Jolley: Welcome to Pod Academy. My name is Rachael Jolley. I'm a journalist and podcast producer. In this episode, we look at the challenges for the National Health Service as it faces COVID in winter 2021.
With Welsh hospitals reporting some of the longest waiting times ever and the Scottish government calling in the army to help drive ambulances are we as prepared as we can be for the winter ahead?
And what does it feel like inside one of the UKs most famous hospitals right now? In September Prime Minister Boris Johnson said further restrictions could be put in place if the NHS is threatened this winter. By the end of the month COVID hospitalisations were already at a high level. To find out more and see how different this winter might be from the last one I spoke with two doctors who work at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge.
We talked about how they'd coped so far and how they're preparing for this winter and what their biggest worries were. I spoke with Mark Toshner, an academic at Cambridge University, who is also a pulmonary physician, a specialist in illnesses relating to the lungs, at Addenbrooke's. While Mark doesn't normally work in intensive care last year, he was called into help out during the worst of the emergency. And Pod Academy also heard from Andrew Conway Morris, a clinical scientist at Cambridge University and a consultant working in intensive care at Addenbrookes.
First we heard from Mark Toshner.
Mark, if I were the Secretary of State for Health, what would you be asking me to do right now?
Mark Toshner: The first thing I would be asking is for our really honest acknowledgement that we're in a difficult place and that we have just under, I think we might even have topped 8000 people in hospital now and we've had that for weeks now, between about 7000 and 8,000 and that this was supposed to be our period of rest, or quiet time, during the summer. In actual fact we've seen almost historic highs of healthcare utilisation.
That's a really tough start to then go into winter for, and, so we're in a really vulnerable position.
Rachael Jolley: And Andy, what is it like in intensive care right now?
Andrew Conway Morris: My unit is about a third full of COVID. We have spilled out into our higher independency area and we are ventilating patients in the high dependency area
Mark Toshner: I've got plenty of colleagues who've essentially just been the coal face now for the better part of a year and a half or longer, and you can see the toll that it's taken on some of them. And it has a pretty heavy toll. And so the winter is going to be tough. I think that nobody's envisaging anything other than a really difficult winter and how diff...
With Covid rates remaining stubbornly high and a huge pent-up demand for hospital care, the UK's National Health Service faces a tough winter. Intensive care wards are the canary in the mine, reports Rachael Jolley.
Mark Toshner: We can make beds, but what we can't make are specialised staff to run those beds. The accident and emergency department needs a very specific skill set. And once you run out of their capacity, you don't really have anywhere to turn.
The winter is going to be tough. I think that nobody's envisaging anything other than a really difficult winter and how difficult that is, I think we don't know, but it's going to be difficult.
If you hear people from intensive care, telling you things are tough, that's a really important canary down the mine, because these people are the SAS of clinical staff. And if they are telling you it's tough, you should be listening.
Andrew Conway Morris: My unit is about a third full of COVID. We have spilled out into our higher independency area and we are ventilating patients in the high dependency area.
Rachael Jolley: Welcome to Pod Academy. My name is Rachael Jolley. I'm a journalist and podcast producer. In this episode, we look at the challenges for the National Health Service as it faces COVID in winter 2021.
With Welsh hospitals reporting some of the longest waiting times ever and the Scottish government calling in the army to help drive ambulances are we as prepared as we can be for the winter ahead?
And what does it feel like inside one of the UKs most famous hospitals right now? In September Prime Minister Boris Johnson said further restrictions could be put in place if the NHS is threatened this winter. By the end of the month COVID hospitalisations were already at a high level. To find out more and see how different this winter might be from the last one I spoke with two doctors who work at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge.
We talked about how they'd coped so far and how they're preparing for this winter and what their biggest worries were. I spoke with Mark Toshner, an academic at Cambridge University, who is also a pulmonary physician, a specialist in illnesses relating to the lungs, at Addenbrooke's. While Mark doesn't normally work in intensive care last year, he was called into help out during the worst of the emergency. And Pod Academy also heard from Andrew Conway Morris, a clinical scientist at Cambridge University and a consultant working in intensive care at Addenbrookes.
First we heard from Mark Toshner.
Mark, if I were the Secretary of State for Health, what would you be asking me to do right now?
Mark Toshner: The first thing I would be asking is for our really honest acknowledgement that we're in a difficult place and that we have just under, I think we might even have topped 8000 people in hospital now and we've had that for weeks now, between about 7000 and 8,000 and that this was supposed to be our period of rest, or quiet time, during the summer. In actual fact we've seen almost historic highs of healthcare utilisation.
That's a really tough start to then go into winter for, and, so we're in a really vulnerable position.
Rachael Jolley: And Andy, what is it like in intensive care right now?
Andrew Conway Morris: My unit is about a third full of COVID. We have spilled out into our higher independency area and we are ventilating patients in the high dependency area
Mark Toshner: I've got plenty of colleagues who've essentially just been the coal face now for the better part of a year and a half or longer, and you can see the toll that it's taken on some of them. And it has a pretty heavy toll. And so the winter is going to be tough. I think that nobody's envisaging anything other than a really difficult winter and how diff...
11 min