H1N1: squeezing down on hospital beds.

By impactEDnurse • Jul 6th, 2009 • Category: ectopics, piss and vinegar, the nurses desk:
A short time ago I wrote about the huge pressure that the H1N1 pandemic might impose on our already struggling health system (why we (probably) should fear the pandemic).  Even though it is a (so called) mild strain.
And today AAP reports that the pressure on hospital beds is beginning to bite:
A HUGE increase in the number of people presenting to New South Wales hospitals with flu-like symptoms has forced the State Government to make hundreds of extra beds available….
…To cope with a 17-fold increase in people with flu symptoms – swine or seasonal – compared to the same period last year, 550 extra beds would be made available, NSW Health Minister John Della Bosca said.
NSW Health’s Chief Medical Officer, Kerry Chant, said the problem was only going to get worse.
“The numbers for our Sydney southwest region are the highest,” Dr Chant said.
“As time goes on, the disease will progressively spread around through the rest of metropolitan Sydney, and will also then progressively spread to our rural and regional areas….
….Dr Chant said it was not possible to say what percentage of the population could be affected by the influenza A(H1N1) virus, but she indicated it could be as high as 40 per cent.
“We would estimate the clinical attack rate is going to be something like 20 to 40 per cent,” she said.
“Because it’s a new virus the population doesn’t have any degree of immunity to it.
550 extra beds made available by New South Wales state government to meet a 17-fold increase in demand. Well that seemed to roll of his tongue pretty easily.
The difficult part will be finding the extra doctors and nurses to staff these beds. Not to mention the extra highly specialized critical care staff that will be needed to manage any patients requiring ventilation.
This at a time when medical staff could have a higher than usual absenteeism rate1 as the flu spreads throughout the community.

  1. most public hospitals push for their staff to have the flu-vax each year to minimize sickness amongst staff. This year those staff will have no immunity to the circulating H1N1 virus. [↩]

impactEDnurse is also known as Ian Miller, a nurse with over 26 years experience working in a busy emergency department in, Australia. This site in no way reflects the opinions of that hospital. All stories (although based on actual experiences) have been changed to protect patient confidentiality.
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One Response »

  1. Sarah on August 1st, 2009 at 4:53 am:

    I just got back from the UK, and it seems nearly everyone has the swine flu there! The BBC website (like ABC over here) said the health authorities are looking to Oz in winter and how they are dealing with the double whammy.
    At the moment, our ICU is half full of swine flu. And a few wards are closed with that nasty gastro virus.
    We are meeting with the union as well, as the protection guidelines for it change daily. And most of staff are pregnant now too!
    It just keeps getting better and better………..

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