Nurse shortage makes Nightingale hospital turn away patients

Due to the shortage of specialized nurses, the Nightingale hospital had to refuse patients and this led to major impacts at other hospitals.

As well as a general lack of PPE, NHS Nightingale hospital is having a shortage of nurses to treat Covid-19 patients and so it has to turn away dozens of patients with Covid. The hospital has been unable to admit about 50 people with the disease and needing “life or death” care since its first patient arrived at the site on 7 April. Thirty of these people were rejected because of a lack of staff.

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Covid: nurses shortage makes Nightingale reject patients

According to NHS documents, the planned transfer of more than 30 patients from established London hospitals to the Nightingale was “cancelled due to staffing issues”. The revelation raises questions about the role and future of the hospital, which up until Monday had only treated 41 patients, despite being designed to include almost 4,000 beds.

That means that the hospital has rejected more patients, owing to a combination of understaffing and the patients’ health, than it has treated.

Between 41 patients, four have died, seven have been discharged to a less critical level of care, and the other 30 were still being cared for at the Nightingale. One member of staff said: “There are plenty of people working here, including plenty of doctors. But there aren’t enough critical care nurses. They’re already working in other hospitals and being run ragged there. There aren’t spare people [specialist nurses] around to do this. That’s the problem. That leads to patients having to be rejected because there aren’t enough critical care nurses”.

One senior intensive care doctor said: “The Nightingale is clearly not a hospital. It’s an emergency overflow facility to ventilate patients to stop them from dying when hospitals have run out of space.” Because of that, Northwick Park hospital in north-west London has a big impact. The hospital needs to temporarily shut its doors to new admissions last month as the impact of the Covid-19 worsened.

It has been unable to transfer more than 30 patients to the Nightingale since 9 April, with many of those planned switches “cancelled due to staffing issues”. The Royal Free hospital, in Camden, London, has also had to abandon plans to transfer about 15 patients from its ICU to the Nightingale. Again, that was often due to a lack of staff. Other hospitals in the capital, including St Mary’s, the Royal London and North Middlesex, have also had transfers blocked.