Nurse shortage causes Nightingale hospital to turn away patients

Dozens of patients with Covid-19 have been turned away from the NHS Nightingale hospital in London because it has too few nurses to treat them, the Guardian can reveal.

The hospital has been unable to admit about 50 people with the disease and needing “life or death” care since its first patient arrived at the site, in the ExCeL exhibition centre, in London’s Docklands, on 7 April. Thirty of these people were rejected because of a lack of staff.

The planned transfer of more than 30 patients from established London hospitals to the Nightingale was “cancelled due to staffing issues”, according to NHS documents seen by the Guardian.

The revelation raises questions about the role and future of the hospital, which up until Monday had only treated 41 patients, despite being designed to include almost 4,000 beds.

One member of staff said: “There are plenty of people working here, including plenty of doctors. But there aren’t enough critical care nurses. They’re already working in other hospitals and being run ragged there. There aren’t spare people [specialist nurses] around to do this. That’s the problem. That leads to patients having to be rejected, because there aren’t enough critical care nurses.”

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Source: The Guardian. 21 April 2020