According to doctors, the corona virus will keep Dutch hospitals busy in the coming years, especially in the winter. That is why they argue for extra IC rooms, and especially special ‘winter staff’. “Covid behaves like a winter virus,” says Hans Kuidsen, intensivist at the Elisabeth-TweeSteden Hospital in Tilburg. “It remains to be seen whether the vaccines that are available will ensure that covid will disappear completely, or that some people still come with covid to a certain extent every winter.”
For the corona virus, it was always busier in the hospitals and intensive care units in the winter than in the summer months, says Kuidsen in WNL Op Saturday on NPO Radio 1. “We notice that we have increasingly difficulty with this in the coming years. to get the right capacity in the air in winter. That has increased with covid. “
Capacity problems
If covid-19 does indeed keep returning every year, Kuidsen thinks that hospitals will have more and more capacity problems in the winter months. “That means that we have to ensure that there is a system that we have a greater capacity in the winter in hospitals and intensive care,” he says. “In the summer you can scale down that capacity, because then you don’t have any patients for that, but then you have to have a meaningful use for the people who don’t have a job.”
More doctors are arguing in the AD for this idea. Peter van der Voort, head of intensive care at UMC Groningen, would also like to create a spare IC in his hospital. “In normal times you can use it for something else, but when the need arises, as ic. For that you need a flexible layer of staff that also has an IC basis. “
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By: Marinka Wagemans
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