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Nurses union doesn’t care New South Wales Claims by Minister of Health Brad Hazzard that Sydney hospitals are facing the Covid epidemic in the city, warning that several facilities are under “enormous pressure” and have “very little capacity” in their departments emergency.
NSW set a new daily record on Wednesday with 919 local cases of Covid. There were 645 Covid patients in the hospital, with 113 people in intensive care, but transmission and exposure at several hospitals has sidelined a significant number of healthcare workers due to isolation requirements.
Despite Hazzard’s assurances that the hospitals of Sydney were ‘coping’, Guardian Australia was contacted by people who had kidney transplants and heart angioplasties booked at public hospitals, but whose operations were canceled and not postponed due to a shortage of staff and staff. exposure to Covid within the hospital system.
NSW Nurses and Midwives Association general secretary Brett Holmes said union members from the Western Sydney Local Health The district, where the Westmead hospital is located, as well as hospitals in the southwest and the Blue Mountains region of Nepean, “are definitely under tremendous pressure.”
“The system is not yet broken, but our members are reporting that they are in full swing. There is very little capacity in their emergency services and ambulances are diverted all over the city.
“Our members are the ones at the bedside and they are really stretched out. They feel exhausted … The reality is that nurses will continue to persevere until they can no longer go any further, either to the point of falling ill, or of exhausting themselves and no longer being able to do so, but they hang on for their colleagues, ”said Holmes.
A woman in her 30s, who asked to remain anonymous, contacted Guardian Australia after the indefinite cancellation of living donor transplants at Westmead Hospital following the Covid outbreak.
The patient had received a kidney in hospital seven years earlier, but had recently failed, and the woman had arranged to receive a kidney from her mother in September.
The woman said she was told last Friday that the live organ transplant program was considered elective surgery and therefore could not continue as hospital staff on the unit because occasional contact with Covid or had been diverted to other units.
He was told the unit did not plan to reopen until at least November.
Unable to undergo dialysis due to other health problems, the woman must now follow a strict diet involving potassium, sodium, magnesium and water intake counts to avoid consuming an excess of whatever is eliminated by kidneys.
She said her life now involved regular testing, taking a cocktail of different drugs and “hanging on for life.”
She and her mother were also isolated “daily” to avoid exposure to Covid before the kidney donation procedure.
“I understood that transplantation was emergency surgery because kidney failure is a ‘life and death’ situation,” she said.
“These are frightening developments for people like me who are already sick and dependent on a functioning public health system,” the woman said.
Elsewhere, patients registered for procedures at Nepean Hospital – which has experienced transmission of Covid between patients in its wards – have reported that their operations have been canceled and not postponed.
A man who contacted Guardian Australia said he was booked for heart angioplasty at Nepean Hospital for August 18, but his “much needed operation” was “canceled at the last minute”. He has not yet been informed of the postponement of his operation.
Healthcare workers, who spoke to the Guardian but were not permitted to speak to the media, accepted the government’s message that the number of intensive care beds in Sydney may be increased from 500 to 2,000, but feared that there are not enough staff to handle so much intensive care. the patients.
Westmead Hospital, which serves western Sydney and some of the hotspot’s local government areas, went into emergency response mode Tuesday evening amid reports of ambulances waiting 12 hours to admit patients. patients positive for Covid in emergency.
As urgent measures were taken to increase Westmead’s capacity on Wednesday, hospital staff were managing around 1,500 Covid patients in the community and 121 patients in their wards. There are 23 currently in intensive care, Hazzard said.
“You have to understand that individual hospitals will all be under some sort of stress from time to time, especially at the breakout epicenter which is in western and southwestern Sydney,” he said. -he declares.
“NSW’s healthcare system is possibly the best in the world. All the information that doctors, nurses and our public health staff have given me indicates that the system is doing well, ”he said.
Beds are made available for urgent cases at Westmead private hospital, patients are transferred to other hospitals and a new short-stay emergency service is set up for those less ill, to avoid the “ramp” – when ambulances are forced to queue to admit patients.
But Holmes said: “I think the minister portrays behavior confident for the safety and security of the community because he portrays the whole system.”
“But we do know that the western and southwestern parts of Sydney and Nepean are extensive and that puts additional pressure on others.”
Do you know more about how hospitals in Sydney are responding to the pressure of the Covid epidemic? Contact [email protected] You can remain anonymous.
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Sources 2/ https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/26/nsw-hospitals-warning-nurses-and-staff-flat-out-and-exhausted-as-covid-numbers-soar The mention sources can contact us to remove/changing this article |
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