Lack of staff and communications biggest challenges at new hospital
HEALTH OFFICIALS fear communications and a lack of clinically trained staff will present some of the biggest challenges at the new 4,000-bed field hospital set to open today.
Leaked documents revealed bosses at the new Nightingale Hospital, set up at the ExCel centre in London, are worried about the number of ambulances and trained crew needed to bring cases to the site.
Draft clinical models seen by the Health Service Journal show an estimated 60 ambulances will be needed to facilitate emergency transfers.
Communication is envisaged to be a problem due to the building’s poor acoustics and because all staff will be working in an unfamiliar setting with a team of people they have never met before.
The vast, open building is normally used for trade fairs and exhibitions.
The documents said “communications within intensive care will require particular attention”, the Journal reported.
The documents also warned that non-specialist nurses may be asked to perform unfamiliar tasks – such as dealing with complications arising from intubation – normally only done by intensive-care nurses.
Officials also plan for the site to receive lower-risk patients, with the most acute cases still being admitted to London hospitals.
The elderly and those with another life-threatening or life-limiting condition are not expected to be sent to the Nightingale.
But the documents also revealed that between 16 and 20 per cent of those admitted are expected to die, the Journal reported.
The draft clinical model said the aim of the facility was to reduce deaths, be part of the wider
London critical-care system and to “provide hope” to the public.
The hospital, named after Florence Nightingale, will need up to 16,000 staff in clinical and ancillary roles to keep running.
Set up by NHS contractors with the assistance of around 200 military personnel in a matter of weeks, the hospital is now preparing to receive its first wave of patients.
The location of the new facility was only announced to the public on March 24.
Hundreds of volunteers from the St John Ambulance charity, with differing levels of clinical training, have volunteered to help out, with around 100 expected to work every shift.
Grounded cabin crew from the UK’s biggest airlines have also been invited to volunteer at the Nightingale and similar planned facilities in Birmingham and Manchester.
Almost all flight staff have firstaid training, including CPR. Their salaries will continue to be paid by the airlines.
Meanwhile, a petition to name the Birmingham NEC Nightingale hospital after a celebrated Victorian heroine and nurse has attracted almost 8,000 signatures.
Jamaican-Scottish nurse Mary Seacole was named Greatest Black Briton in a 2004 poll. Seacole tended wounded soldiers during the Crimean War in the mid-19th century.
Mother Seacole, as she was known by troops, was refused formal permission by the War Office to go and help alongside Florence Nightingale’s more wellknown mercy mission but travelled to the Crimea anyway.
While there she set up a nursing station behind the front lines tending the wounded.
More recently, the Royal College of Nursing named an annual award in her honour and in 2016 a statue of Seacole was unveiled at St Thomas’ Hospital, London.