Families’ funeral dilemma over PPE
SOME families faced a “stark choice” between saying goodbye to a loved one or attending their funeral during Covid if PPE was not available, an inquiry has heard.
Dr Barbara Miles, president of the Scottish Intensive Care Society, said if a patient was being treated in a unit where full PPE had to be worn, a family member would be deemed a close contact if they went in to say a final farewell without it.
They would then have to isolate and risk missing the funeral if it fell within the isolation period.
Dr Barbara Miles, an intensive care doctor in Glasgow, was giving evidence to the Scottish Covid-19 Inquiry.
She said there was an increase in staff turnover which had an impact on the level of experience in intensive care units.
She added: “I think people felt overwhelmed at times by what they had gone through and some people felt they could not continue working in critical care afterwards, so after the first wave of the pandemic most critical care units started to see a loss of their staff base.” The inquiry also heard there was a “complete lack” of adequate PPE for doctors in general practice.
Dr Iain Kennedy, chairman of BMA Scotland, said the fluidresistant paper surgical masks GPs had were “relatively useless” and there was a “complete lack of adequate PPE in terms of respiratory protective equipment in general practice and a relative lack in the hospital sector”.
The GP, from Inverness, said authorities were affected by “droplet dogma”. He said: “It meant that fundamentally the wrong sort, type of PPE respiratory equipment was supplied to us.”
The inquiry continues before Lord Brailsford in Edinburgh.