Forum Topic

PPE

As I understand it there are huge numbers of directors, managers and under-managers in every hospital so how come it isn't their responsibility to order PPE along with beds, equipment and paperclips?

Viv Griffiths ● 2398d26 Comments

From what I've heard the managers are all working from home, surely Leadership starts at the front? Hardly inspires confidence does it?

Vanessa Smith ● 2398d

Viv,  I don't think you've even begun to  grasp this situation...Everything is the fault of the government.Everything.In fact the next time I hear the awful throb of another twerp starting up their bloody pressure hose to blast the living daylights out of their patio, I'll be writing to Boris Johnson...  In no uncertain terms....Dear Mr Johnson,Why haven't you even begun to address the appalling pressure-hose scandal in Chiswick...Yours etcetera...

Stuart Kerr ● 2398d

After a great deal of thought I've rewritten my letter to the PM.  It now reads:-Dear Johnson,Sod covids.  What about this outbreak of pressure-hosing in Chiswick gardens.  Why haven't you done anything about it?Yours etcetera...(copy to Priti Patel)

Stuart Kerr ● 2398d

I think you will find that there are restrictions on doing anything especially spending money in the NHS.  That is why there is a tremendous shortage of staff.Ordering PPE is only one part of the PPE problem.

Philippa Bond ● 2397d

Vanessa - Have you perhaps misunderstood the situation? Clinical leadership is delivered by medically qualified staff who are leading from the front. Those managers that can work from home are doing so. Would you rather that ALL NHS managers were physically in the hospitals increasing the risk of cross infection of colleagues and endangering the lives of themselves and others in the wider community?

Cllr Sam Hearn ● 2397d

Important to keep the myth going."Myth. The NHS in England is a £100 billion-a-year-plus business. It sees 1 million patients every 36 hours, spending nearly £2 billion a week. Aside from the banks, the only companies with a larger turnover in the FTSE 100 are the two global oil giants Shell and BP. If the NHS were a country it would be around the thirtieth largest in the world.If anything, our analysis seems to suggest that the NHS, particularly given the complexity of health care, is under- rather than over-managed"https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/health-and-social-care-bill/mythbusters/nhs-managers

Guy Lambert ● 2397d

My wife is an NHS manager. She is also a clinician who goes to work on her ward, a neo natal ICU, every day.

Carl Wynne ● 2397d

I am with you Stuart, the saddest thing is that everyone expects the NHS to be perfect which it isn’t but it’s not too far off, we should appreciate the NHS, thank everyone for the incredible job they do all the time. I have a real issue with people who are so negative, no one was prepared for a pandemic around the world except perhaps China! this virus is mainly aggressive amongst older folk or people with underlying health issues. Sadly many of them would have died from a common infection or flu. People don’t live forever so from mid eighties something gets them.

Jayne Thorburn ● 2397d

I have a real issue with people who think it is OK to take such risks with other people's lives.

Philippa Bond ● 2397d

If, as now predicted, the UK has the worst outcome of all European nations, then I’ll have a real issue with anyone who attempts to shift the blame from Government policy to the NHS. Meantime, anyone who wants to put party politics aside during this crisis should probably try doing just that.

Kerry Chandler ● 2397d

Jayne, stop trying to discredit criticism of the failings of the government by responding to it as if it were criticism of the NHS. Like many people, I have nothing but praise for our NHS, and the devotion and heroism of doctors and nurses in the front-line, but feel we have been sadly let down by a negligent, insouciant government imbued with a wholly unjustified sense of British exceptionalism. We have watched with horror what has happened in Italy, and our government has failed to learn the lessons. The lockdown came far too late in time, and we've still only undertaken a fraction of the testing undertaken in other European countries.  This is not negativity - this is cold, hard reality. And finally, speaking as a 75-year old, I take great exception to being written off as someone that is likely shortly to shuffle off this mortal coil, and, by implication, expendable.

Robert Fish ● 2397d

The bottom line is that we as a country are less well prepared than we could have been as a direct result of government decisions about spending restrictions in line with their austerity policies.  And the lessons from Exercise Cygnus were willfully ignored.  This shocking read from from the Daily Telegraph of all papers:https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/28/exercise-cygnus-uncovered-pandemic-warnings-buried-government/I would have massive respect for any Tory who would just stand up and admit that they got a few things wrong and that they would learn from their mistakes.  But Tories never seem to do that, do they?

Alastair Banton ● 2397d

The government does not run the NHS fact! Robert I referred to mid eighties and older the fact is older people die of something and very often in the case of both my parents a common infection that wouldn’t kill younger people but it doesn’t get reported. Approx 50% of people we don’t really know the true demographics of those that have died  are mid eighties plus. Both my parents in their 70’s were in brilliant health mum hit 80 and started to decline my dad hit 90’s before his health started to decline so of course it varies. I honestly believe that everyone in government and NHS is working 24/7 doing their utmost best to secure provisions PPE, drugs etc. Testing is obviously proving to be really hard, my guess is back in the 70’s we started to move away from manufacturing to a more service, creative industry lead economy. So we don’t have manufacturing industries that we can pull on hence relying on imports.

Jayne Thorburn ● 2397d

"The government does not run the NHS, fact!" That's a truism, Jayne, and meaningless, unless of course you're trying to say that the failings of the NHS are not the responsibility of the government, but rather of the NHS itself. One minute you're trying to conflate the NHS and the government, so as to mute criticism of the latter, and the next appear to be trying to distance them, so as to excuse the government of responsibility. If that is indeed the intention behind your comment, I would simply ask: how incompetent and uncaring does the government have to be before you stop acting as an apologist for it?

Robert Fish ● 2397d

The fact remains that the government has for weeks promised so much testing, so many ventilators and so much PPE without delivering anything remotely close. They have lied, lied and lied again. Against this unsavoury backdrop, NHS staff risk their own lives every day, work relentlessly long shifts and have to deal with the trauma of being unable to save lives. The government may not run the NHS but it does help fund it and is supposedly running this crisis. Otherwise, why do you think it gives a daily briefing? Not that the briefings are anything but shameful, but that's another story.

Beryl Wall ● 2397d

Another fact is that the NHS emergency stocks, including PPE, have been wound down by 40% over the last six years. Of course, the government will have had nothing to do with that...

Alan Clark ● 2397d

And the government is now blaming us if this gets worse when they could have taken good measures much earlier on.Letting all sorts come and go from airports with no checking, for example. Or this horrid isolation starting earlier.Makes you wonder!

Sarah Vickers ● 2397d

Spot on Sarah.If this Governmentt was a Company Board Of Directors they would already have been out on their ear. They have sold everone in the HHS and the people of this counntry right down the river, and you can see the look of fear in their faces when they front up their daily briefings that they know their reckoning is yet to come.

Roger Talbot ● 2397d

Hope so

Sarah Vickers ● 2397d

There was always a chance that this would be the year that we would have a pandemic and that is the reason for risk assessments and preparation.

Philippa Bond ● 2397d

I have received a picture from my niece, a nurse on a Covid 19 ward. She is in her PPE with a visor etc. On closer inspection she is wearing a plastic bag on her head. The mismanagement of this crisis will be in the news for years.

Stewart Jones ● 2397d

Someone should have told the government that this risk was coming. Oh. They did.

Alan Clark ● 2397d

Robert I don’t come from a blame culture, this is a world first Europe and the US are struggling, I prefer to support those that have the power to get us through this pandemic we all have a part to play this is a team effort on behalf of the world. We rely heavily on the medical and scientific community to guide us through, the government to provide the money and support to help them achieve the objectives. Does anyone actually believe they are not doing their best? they might not get everything right all of the time but that’s no reason to point the finger. Let’s support the Team! Our part follow the guidance stay home.

Jayne Thorburn ● 2397d

China bought most of the PPE in February and are now making a profit selling it back to us or 'donating' it as a PR exercise.https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/26/coronavirus-doctors-issue-protective-equipment-warning-after-report-china-backed-firm-sourced-bulk-supplies-from-sydney

Ben Gemmingen ● 2397d

So, just to go back to the original question: does anyone have any  suggestions as to where Viv’s “...huge numbers of directors, managers and under-managers in every hospital” should source their “PPE along with beds, equipment and paperclips”? You’d think, wouldn’t you, that if it were that simple, just maybe all those directors, managers and under-managers (can’t remember when anyone last mentioned under-managers but, anyway...) would have sourced the necessary PPE and paperclips simply in order to save NHS lives - and their patients. But apparently not. What can they all have been thinking? Viv: your views?

Beryl Wall ● 2397d

When the scale of the problem became apparent the government started "ramping up" supplies. The following week they were still "ramping up". The next week? Yup: "ramping up" supplies. Week after week we are told the same thing: "ramping up, ramping up, ramping up:. But very little change on the ground.  This government is about 100% window dressing, and 0% action.Then is was a "logistical problem".Now, apparently, there is enough PPE, but the NHS staff keep on using it!

T P Howell ● 2396d