catmag

I’m on nightshift number 4 tonight. We’ve spent every night helping out in Covid ITU as there’s not enough staff overnight given they’re proning the ventilated patients and they need fully turning onto their fronts every few hours. I woke up at teatime today and had 3 messages on my phone which all basically said “Please don’t listen to today’s government briefing” Now I know why. Sanctimonious bitch.

Renton - I can’t speak for anyone’s experience but my own. The patients I’ve been to intubate have been absolutely exhausted to the point that they are desperate for some respite. They’ve been conscious and consenting and I feel like I’ve been more terrified than they are. I haven’t posted much on this until today but I’ve been dipping in and out and reading bits here and there. This whole thing can become all-consuming and I know that personally given what I’m dealing with at work I need to actively avoid news, social media and forums for good periods of time otherwise I lose perspective and start to feel panic-stricken. Genuine question @Renton but do you think you would benefit from a break from the 24/7 nature of all this? It’s not healthy for any of us 🙁

I’m no expert. I can’t dig out the right graphs, or forecasts, or numbers, or theories, or projections or possibilities. I can just give you the reality of the day-to-day. Where patients are people and not statistics.

As the person standing next to you as you’re anaesthetised, I can assure you that in the case of Covid you’re just grateful that someone else is going to do your breathing for you. I’m yet to see ‘terror’ so would be grateful if you’d calm the fuck down and stop presuming things based on no experience whatsoever.

Yep, we did. In Washington

Who knows? You can predict precisely nowt with this thing 🙁

Just a thought aswell. If he’s been on a general Covid ward then it’s likely to be a 15:1 patient to nurse ratio. ITU gets him 1:1 care. Or it did until this past couple of weeks.. And they can do fancy tests like ABG’s (arterial blood gases) to check his respiratory function based on the levels of CO2 in his blood, thus being able to detect further deterioration far more quickly than if he was ward-based. If the ABG results show rapidly deteriorating resp function then ventilation will be required whilst the docs try to correct everything with the patient under anaesthesia. And I can guarantee that every nurse the Tories have shafted for years will do absolutely everything they can for him. As they should.

Not necessarily, there’s 2 levels to Intensive Care, the lower level being High Dependency (HDU) I imagine they’d have taken him there long before his condition became critical as they would with a Muggle but worrying news nonetheless 🙁

Uh-oh... 🙁

Bloody kills me when Gemmill is right 😆

Thanks ❤️ We’re all winging it and shifting ourselves in case we get it. I’ve got a couple of nights off and a bottle of red ready to be opened.

They just work faster and are more effective as they’re infused straight into the blood without having to be digested by the stomach. Plus there are some super-strong IV antibiotics that just don’t come in tablet form.

It’s not fun but it’s manageable for now. We had a run of patients deteriorating and needing intubation for ventilation last weekend (I did 2 in one night and there was 2 the next shift) and I thought that was going to be the start of the madness but it eased off in ITU although general admissions are ramping up. We’ve since had a couple we’ve managed to wean off the ventilator and more that have died. We’re now treating any patient that comes to surgery as Covid positive which means full PPE and protocol. It’s like walking into the lion’s den every night not knowing what you’ll be facing. The worst thing so far was hearing a relative screaming at my colleague down the phone when he was told he couldn’t visit his dying mother. She was called a heartless bitch and various other things and he threatened to kick his way into the department. I totally get it but it’s heartbreaking and mentally and emotionally exhausting.

More likely he’s been admitted for 02 therapy and chest x-rays. IV antibiotics if he’s got pneumonia. The majority of ventilated patients at our place are patients that were initially admitted with unmanageable symptoms and then deteriorated later.

Probably delays in reporting deaths to PHE by the hospitals due to operational pressures/reduced admin staff etc.