PPE is still a frigging joke in this country.

[MrSki]

Looking how China has taken PPE seriously it is a a fucking scandal that workers in the UK have to wear the shit they are given.



The two ambulance crews I had interaction with today had virtually nothing that might help reduce the spread of a virus. First crew (A Covid-19 special) one was wearing a mask that could have been for kids dressing up party & the other had his in his hands. This was a Covid-19 response ambulance. in Dorset.
Gloves could have been old pick & mix from woolworths
Second crew, No gloves, no masks. When I spoke to them they just seemed to accept they would be getting it & very little to passing it on.
The NHS has been shat on from a great height & this is crap. Maybe the NHS should approach the makers of Silent Witness & other crime scene dramas and get hold of their suits.

Fuck sake key workers deserve better!!!

 

[elbows]

Yes I've been calling it a scandal for some time and I regret that the subject did not get its own thread sooner - thanks for starting this one! I might try and put a load of articles on the subject from recent weeks into this thread if I have some spare time in the coming days, to fill in some of the gaps.

 

[wiskey]

I've had normal crews coming in in paper suits, the PICU crew transferring a covid +ve intubated patient had full on PPE like that video, our staff who do invasive aerosol generating procedures have full kit (surgeons etc), we have a supply of ffp3 masks for certain procedures and visors/surgical gowns etc.

There is a lack of kit though, the local academy has just donated it's supplies of masks, visors, goggles etc to the ambulance service.

We're getting through about 300 surgical masks a day and we are only seeing a third of the number of expected patients (so far) ... Boxes of masks almost can't be delivered fast enough.

When I worked for the ambulance service in London there was a really good response system for pretty much every disaster, but it's the largest service covering the most people in a time when urban terrorism is a big thing .... Rural services just don't have the tried and tested supply routes.

 

[wiskey]

Maybe the NHS should approach the makers of Silent Witness & other crime scene dramas and get hold of their suits.

Holby city and casualty have given all their equipment and stores.
BBC News - Coronavirus: Casualty and Holby City donate protective equipment to NHS

Coronavirus: Casualty and Holby City donate protective equipment to NHS

The BBC medical dramas give kit from their sets to the NHS as the UK battles coronavirus.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[elbows]

It was back in early March that I noticed, via this tweet, that the government PPE criteria has been changed.



It was a downgrade, when he says it was a 'rationalisation' thats because they looked at how much stock they actually had and decided they had to skimp. Some days later he had another go at justifying it along the same lines but I dont think it added much to the picture.

 

[elbows]

✍️ Sign: #ProtectNHSworkers now

The UK is not meeting WHO standards on personal protection equipment. The Government must ensure every NHS worker has a mask, goggles, gown and gloves so they can protect themselves from #COVID19

actionnetwork.org

To: The Prime Minister, Boris Johnson
From: [Your Name]

Dear Prime Minister,
I am writing to you to outline the grave concerns of UK doctors regarding the provision of personal protective equipment in the national fight against coronavirus.
I run EveryDoctor, an organisation advocating for UK doctors and our patients. We also run the largest private political Facebook group welcoming all UK doctors (25000 members, 15000 of whom check in every single day).
We are not satisfied with the PPE guidelines set out by NHS England and NHS Improvement, Public Health England and the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges on 28.03.2020.
The guidance being issued by these bodies does not meet WHO recommendations. The WHO, in their guidance from 19.03.2020, states that when healthcare workers (HCWs) are in contact with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 patients;
HCWs should use a medical mask;
HCWs should wear eye protection (goggles) or facial protection (face shield) to avoid contamination of mucous membranes;
HCWs should wear a clean, non-sterile, long-sleeved gown.
HCWs should also wear gloves.
At this juncture, we believe that any NHS patient exhibiting cough or cold-like symptoms, or any patient experiencing any symptoms of potential sepsis should be considered a suspected COVID-19 case until proven otherwise.
We therefore believe that all NHS staff should have ready access to the PPE items listed above. The disease burden across our nation is escalating; case numbers are rising, deaths are rising, and healthcare workers are beginning to die of the illness (in part, no doubt, due to the high viral load they are exposed to in their daily work). In order to protect the public, we need to protect NHS staff adequately.
We call upon you to update the national PPE guidelines in line with WHO recommendations with immediate effect, and then ensure that adequate PPE is swiftly distributed to all NHS healthcare facilities.
Yours sincerely,
Dr Julia Patterson
EveryDoctor lead.
Counter-signed by

 

[elbows]

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30727-3/fulltext

“When this is all over, the NHS England board should resign in their entirety.” So wrote one National Health Service (NHS) health worker last weekend. The scale of anger and frustration is unprecedented, and coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is the cause.

England's Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Jenny Harries, said on March 20, 2020: “The country has a perfectly adequate supply of PPE.” She claimed that supply pressures had now been “completely resolved”. I am sure Dr Harries believed what she said. But she was wrong and she should apologise to the thousands of health workers who still have no access to WHO-standard PPE. I receive examples daily of doctors having to assess patients with respiratory symptoms but who do so without the necessary PPE to complete their jobs safely. Health workers are challenged if they ask for face masks. Even where there is PPE, there may be no training. WHO standards are not being met. Proper testing of masks is being omitted. Stickers with new expiry dates are being put on PPE that expired in 2016. Doctors have been forced to go to hardware stores to buy their own face masks. Patients with suspected COVID-19 are mixing with non-COVID-19 patients. The situation is so dire that staff are frequently breaking down in tears. As one physician wrote, “The utter failure of sound clinical leadership will lead to an absolute explosion of nosocomial COVID-19 infection.” Front-line staff are already contracting and dying from the disease.

They had a duty to immediately put the NHS and British public on high alert. February should have been used to expand coronavirus testing capacity, ensure the distribution of WHO-approved PPE, and establish training programmes and guidelines to protect NHS staff. They didn't take any of those actions. The result has been chaos and panic across the NHS. Patients will die unnecessarily. NHS staff will die unnecessarily. It is, indeed, as one health worker wrote last week, “a national scandal”. The gravity of that scandal has yet to be understood.

 

[elbows]

Frontline NHS staff 'frightened' over lack of protective equipment | ITV News

Frontline NHS staff have been expressing their fears to one of the West Country's leading viral experts | ITV News West Country

www.itv.com

I struggle to watch the daily press conferences when this sort of wriggling takes place:

Talking this evening (March 31st) the Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Dr Jenny Harries, said: "The first thing to say is that the UK has always had sufficient stocks to date that it needs against its guidelines and those guidelines are amongst the best in the world."

Dr Harries added: "The distribution element has been a little bit tricky at times and we have now taken a whole strand of the logistics, including with the army's support actually, out so that we are developing a UK position on that stock and distribution flow.

"And the underlying critical point about this is that the PPE should go to match where the critical, clinical risk is."

On how workers feel, she added: "We are very attuned to this and what we've been doing over the last few days is reviewing our guidance to see if, although we're quite satisfied with the technical basis of it, if we can make some small tweaks if you like to ensure that people feel safer in what they are doing.

"And we're addressing that over the current period."

 

[elbows]

BMA media centre | British Medical Association

The BMA has a central media team at BMA House in London and media teams in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales to assist journalists with their enquiries

www.bma.org.uk

The BMA says that, without proper personal protection, some doctors treating Covid-19 patients are likely to become very ill and some may die. Without personal protection, the infection will spread, the epidemic worsen, and if doctors are sick, this will deplete the very workforce we need to care for ever growing numbers of very ill patients.

The doctors union has issued this unambiguous warning because of growing evidence that thousands of GPs and hospital staff are still not being provided with the kit they need to properly protect themselves and their patients. The BMA has asked its members for their accounts of how or if gowns, masks, aprons and goggles are getting through to front line staff and the responses show that in the main, they simply are not – or if they are, it’s in very small amounts and is rationed or not offering sufficient protection.

One doctor wrote: “Coughed on by Covid patients all day today. No visors available…. tomorrow I’m borrowing my 9 year old’s safety specs she got in a science party bag. I wish this was actually a joke."

Another said: “We have no testing or PPE on mental health units, and the environment was never designed to contain an epidemic. Given that asymptomatic people can spread the virus, within weeks 100% of patients and staff will be infected, and it will be just pot luck who survives.”

 

[elbows]

The BMA has warned that doctors are still being placed at “considerable risk” by shortages of personal protective equipment, despite government assurances that enough supplies are being delivered.

On 30 March the association said it was seeking urgent clarity from the government on what risks staff in hospitals and GP surgeries should and should not have to take if they didn’t have adequate PPE. The move follows a warning last week that the shortage of PPE was unacceptable and was putting doctors’ lives at risk.1

The warning was in response to the secretary of state for housing, communities, and local government, Robert Jenrick, saying at the government’s daily briefing on 29 March that “we cannot and should not ask healthcare workers to be on the frontline without appropriate protective equipment,” while emphasising that “millions” of masks, gloves, eye protectors, and gowns were being delivered.

But the BMA said it continued to receive reports over the weekend of 28-29 March of doctors and staff not having access to adequate PPE. One junior doctor reported, “I have asthma and had a recent chest infection. I fear that I am risking my health and life because adequate PPE has not been made available in my workplace.”

Covid-19: Doctors still at “considerable risk” from lack of PPE, BMA warns

The BMA has warned that doctors are still being placed at “considerable risk” by shortages of personal protective equipment, despite government assurances that enough supplies are being delivered. On 30 March the association said it was seeking urgent clarity from the government on what risks...

www.bmj.com

 

[elbows]

Plenty of details on improvisations people have had to come up with, such as this one from quite a long way into this article:

Coronavirus doctor's diary: Why are people stealing hospital supplies?

Dr John Wright explains how Bradford Royal Infirmary is preparing for a "tsunami" of Covid-19 cases.

www.bbc.co.uk

We have also been taking steps to obtain more personal protective equipment.

Our stocks of surgical masks are good, but supplies of more effective PPE masks and eye-protection visors were running low. So a consultant, Dr Tom Lawton, went to Screwfix to buy industrial masks - and then found a way of attaching medical filters to them, using a 3D printer he keeps in his garage. Another went to a builders' merchants and bought 2,000 pairs of goggles.

Consultant anaesthetist Dr Michael McCooe, meanwhile, started looking into ways of sterilising masks, so they could be re-used, and called Whittaker's gin distillery in the Yorkshire Dales. Mr Whittaker himself answered the phone, and said that his 96% proof gin could be diluted for the purpose.

"He was very happy to donate to us," Dr McCooe told me. "He'd been looking into whether they could supply more alcohol to the health service and whether they could make hand sanitiser. It's a great step forward and now we just need somewhere safe to store it all!"

 

[elbows]

Back on 22nd March:

NHS staff feel like 'cannon fodder' over lack of coronavirus protection

Frontline staff in plea for PPE as some improvise by tying plastic aprons around their head

www.theguardian.com

Nurses in the Royal Free hospital in north London have been affixing clinical waste bags around their legs, the Guardian has been told, while at North Middlesex hospital they have been tying plastic aprons around their heads.

One nurse, who did not wish to be named, said: “Widespread nurses are making their own PPE. I know friends I trained with doing the same. We have to protect ourselves, some of us have children and babies. We are trying to help people but have to protect families. I don’t know why we are not getting PPE.”

 

[teqniq]

... Maybe the NHS should approach the makers of Silent Witness & other crime scene dramas and get hold of their suits....

Fuck sake key workers deserve better!!!

The truth is stranger than fiction. This perhaps, belongs here:

 

[MrSki]

The two crews who I interacted with today seemed unconcerned with social distancing from my Mum or any other H&S shit. Hands all over the counter. I have managed to get my Mum & my brother to socially isolate for the last couple of weeks but my brother is now probably fucked cos he is in a NHS hospital & my Mum could be too if any of the four Ambulance crews were shedding. I could not believe that they had been trained in anything relating to this. They should have at least been wearing masks but end of shift & didn;t seem to give a fuck!

 

[elbows]

The NHS organisations involved appear to want to stop staff from highlighting the lack of facemasks, goggles, visors and gowns that has created huge alarm and fear at the frontline. Many health professionals are worried that they may contract the virus during the course of their work, especially if their PPE is inadequate, and pass it on to patients or their families.

In recent weeks staff have posted photographs on social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram of makeshift PPE they have put together using materials such as bin bags.

For example, A&E staff at Southend hospital in Essex have been warned that they could face disciplinary action if they raise the issue of PPE publicly.

In a memo on 26 March they were told: “The posting of inappropriate social media commentary or the posting of photographs of staff in uniform who are not complying with IPC [infection prevention and control] standards and social distancing requirements is unacceptable. Such behaviour will be considered under the disciplinary policy.

“Now, perhaps more than ever, NHS staff are in the public eye and we have a responsibility to convey a professional image and to role model positive messages about social distancing. It would be very sad for moments of inappropriate or unprofessional behaviour to undermine the respect that we and our colleagues have from the public.”

NHS staff 'gagged' over coronavirus shortages

Doctors and nurses warned not to discuss lack of protective kit, medics claim

www.theguardian.com

 

[IC3D]

Its okay our families will get compensation if we die now apparently in addition to our pension contributions.

 

[elbows]

Had to resort to crowdfunding:

James McAvoy donates £275,000 to NHS medics’ PPE crowdfunding appeal

Actor’s donation takes total raised to over £400,000 for purchase of masks, visors and gloves

www.theguardian.com

 

[elbows]

I will conclude this quick attempt to fill the thread with some recent history on the subject, with the stuff about the department of health & Hunt rejecting an eye protection stockpiling recommendation a few years ago due to cost.

Advice on protective gear for NHS staff was rejected owing to cost

Exclusive: DoH dismissed call for eye protection – now needed for coronavirus – in 2017

www.theguardian.com

 

[cupid_stunt]

The two ambulance crews I had interaction with today had virtually nothing that might help reduce the spread of a virus. First crew (A Covid-19 special) one was wearing a mask that could have been for kids dressing up party & the other had his in his hands. This was a Covid-19 response ambulance. in Dorset.
Gloves could have been old pick & mix from woolworths
Second crew, No gloves, no masks. When I spoke to them they just seemed to accept they would be getting it & very little to passing it on.
The NHS has been shat on from a great height & this is crap. Maybe the NHS should approach the makers of Silent Witness & other crime scene dramas and get hold of their suits.

Fuck sake key workers deserve better!!!

That's bad, when my pregnant niece had to call 999 last week, one paramedic went in with full bio-hazard suit on (space suit type), but the other had to stay outside, because they had no PPE.

 

[kropotkin]

I have colleagues bringing in goggles they've bought on amazon. We had visors finally arrive on Friday last week. Friday was the day I developed symptoms, around 10 days after seeing my first case, and scrupulous use of our ppe (flimsy apron, bare arms surgical mask, gloves)

 

[LDC]

That's bad, when my pregnant niece had to call 999 last week, one paramedic went in with full bio-hazard suit on (space suit type), but the other had to stay outside, because they had no PPE.

I've been told by paramedics that they're doing that to save on PPE.

 

[Lord Camomile]

Yup, last week my paramedic friend said it's basically "one between two", and even then it's shite, insufficient PPE.

Scandal is fucking right.

 

[LDC]

I have colleagues bringing in goggles they've bought on amazon. We had visors finally arrive on Friday last week. Friday was the day I developed symptoms, around 10 days after seeing my first case, and scrupulous use of our ppe (flimsy apron, bare arms surgical mask, gloves)

Where did the visors come from, a medical supplier or one of the new manufacturers that are supposed to be making them now?

 

[kropotkin]

Medical supplier - they'd been ordered already but took a while to get to us.

 

[platinumsage]

NHS hospital orders PPE manufactured by a private school's D&T department.

 

[Indeliblelink]

Lots of schools donated the safety goggles and safety specs from their science departments last week.

 

[mauvais]

 

[kalidarkone]

I turned up for work last night- got the wrong night- its tonight for 3 nights (doh!) Anyway the sister in charge gave me a surgical mask and said

"take that home with you and bring it in because they may run out by tomorrow night!"

The policy is that we wear them when within a meter of any patient. They last 6 hours and if there are not any more then I'll be going home cus I'm not a hero and self preservation in my priority.

Masks with visors for stage 1 recovery when the patient is expelling aerosol particles, possibly needing suction and definitely 02.
This is for caring for patients not suspected or positive for c19.

 

[LDC]

Yeah, some places are saying just wear them all the time now with any patient contact, not just suspected or confirmed CV.

Starting to feel a bit like a medical Stalingrad with us being ordered forward by the Trust and PHE from safe offices.

 

[elbows]

Coronavirus: Southend Hospital staff could 'limit work' over protective equipment

Staff are said to be "petrified" at the lack of protective equipment during the coronavirus crisis.

www.bbc.co.uk

In the letter, clinicians at Southend A&E note:

• "PPE is being rationed", that "there is limited stock" and what is available is being "locked away from staff and not accessible"
• Staff are said to be "petrified" working in the hospital and claim that most have not been tested for the virus
• Staff also say that many "are reluctant to work in this [high-risk] area" because of safety issues "but continue to do so as we have the welfare of our patients foremost"

They warn chief executive Clare Panniker that if the standard and availability of PPE is not improved by "close of play" on 1 April, they will introduce "restricted services" in high-risk areas of the hospital.