A lot of people are asking about @NightingaleLDN and the current response. Having spent a lot of time there during the last wave, we are proud of all the energy that went into the response. The NHS in London has adapted and changed since the first wave, with hospitals such as 1/
vastly increasing critical care capacity. It was always clear that care would be better delivered within the confines of an established NHS hospital although at the time this capacity was just not there. With the creation of a 170 bed critical care unit 2/
the current efforts are in bringing all that new resource online to help people needing critical care, and this is progressing. One of the challenges @NightingaleLDN was around public information, and this was tricky to overcome. The other challenge in 3/
providing staff was also well documented. NHS staff, especially in the numbers needed to staff a critical care bed are not ‘spare’ when an incident hits and all hospitals, Nightingale or not, are grappling with the staffing challenge. This current wave is huge, and who knows 4/
if the resources of @NightingaleLDN will be needed, even if in a different operating model. It would be silly to say this won’t happen, as the new variant wave is shocking for us all. But the focus on firstly using the additional new capacity within @NHSEnglandLDN is the 5/