Face of Nation International : The NHS will draw on airline cabin crews to help staff the new Nightingale hospitals that are being constructed to cope with the wave of patients expected to need critical care as the coronavirus outbreak unfolds.
EasyJet has written to 9,000 UK-based staff, of whom 4,000 are trained in CPR, to invite them to volunteer for further training before helping out at the critical care field hospitals in London, Birmingham and Manchester. Virgin Atlantic will contact 4,000 of its employees from Monday and prioritise those who already have relevant skills that can be put to good use at the sites. The volunteers will perform support roles, such as changing beds under the guidance of trained nurses, and will continue to be paid by the airlines.
Work is under way to convert the ExCeL centre in London’s docklands into a 4,000-bed hospital, with an initial capacity for 500 beds with ventilators and oxygen. The hospital could open as early as this week. Two more Nightingale hospitals are being built at Manchester’s Central Convention Centre and the NEC in Birmingham.
But as volunteers for unskilled work flood in, doctors have expressed concern about where the specialist medics and nurses will come from. One London doctor who spoke to the Guardian said there would be no new staff, meaning those already working in NHS critical care would be spread even more thinly. (Source: The Guardian News – UK)
