The limits of intensive care must be strictly taken into account in the corona measures, argues intensivist Diederik Gommers in the BNR podcast Ask Gommers. According to the IC doctor, Dutch hospitals can scale up to 1350 beds with their IC capacity, but a specific part of this must remain free for ‘non-Covid patients’. “If we get more than 650 corona patients in the ICU, then we are dealing with code black.”
This limit is partly determined by the number of care nurses that can work in the ICUs. Due to a shortage of these, the number of beds that can be used is limited. That is why, according to Gommers, it is also necessary to structurally recruit more staff, so that the corona virus can also be dealt with in the future. The IC doctor assumes that the corona virus, in addition to the influenza virus, returns every winter, which means that hospitals will also get busier during such periods. “You’re going to live with an extra virus. There will always be an offer of Covid patients to the hospitals and intensive care units, especially in the winter months.’
Listen also | Ask Gommers: When will we reach code black in intensive care units?
‘200 extra beds’
To ensure that normal care is not affected by this, extra IC beds must be installed, says Gommers. At the current occupancy of 950 IC beds, which are largely intended for emergency care, 200 extra beds would be needed to deal with Covid and influenza structurally, according to the intensivist. He emphasizes that at the moment the beds for Covid patients are partly ‘released’ because operations are being postponed.
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‘Going to live with the virus’
However, in order to get those 200 beds, additional staff will have to be added on a structural basis. ‘200 beds equals 800 nurses and 50 to 80 doctors.’ It will be a challenge, especially for nursing care, to bring in that extra staff, says Gommers. ‘Those doctors are relatively easy to get hold of. But those 800 nurses are tough. We are unable to obtain those structural beds at the moment.’ Gommers therefore calls on you to do the nursing course. ‘Come to the hospital and do the training. The crisis is now over and let’s get it right. We need to make sure we live with the virus, but not with rapid increases and panic every time. Unfortunately it still is.’
Current hospital occupancy
With the current corona figures, a code black is far from close. There are currently a total of 748 corona patients in Dutch hospitals. This means that the same level has been reached as just before the summer at the beginning of June. There are a total of 185 people with the corona virus in the ICUs. There are 563 Covid patients in the nursing wards.
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