Gert van der Hoek
In Memoriam - Editor, Senior Moderator
NIJMEGEN - The hospitals are raising the alarm. Ambulances with patients must already be sent to the emergency department. The intensive care units are slowly but surely shifting to the phase where it must be decided who is and who is not admitted.
12/22/20
Minister Tamara van Ark (Medical Care and Sport) has announced that Dutch hospitals are temporarily suspending all non-urgent care. This mainly concerns treatments that can wait longer than six weeks, such as groin and hip operations or cosmetic procedures.
But despite this measure, there are major concerns among hospitals. "We are going to have three, four very tough weeks," fears IC head Hans van der Hoeven of Radboudumc, who is also professor of intensive care. “We are now completely full, while the numbers of corona patients will continue to rise for weeks. If it continues like this, everything has to be postponed, this is really a very, very critical period that we are in. ""
"Who does who who doesn't"
It means, among other things, that the hospital is entering the phase where conversations with patients 'will shift'. “If a doctor talks to a patient about a possible admission to the ICU, that conversation will change if you know that there is little space. We notice that things are slowly moving in the direction of "who is who who is not." Unnoticed, without being spoken, you start selecting patients. ""
"The capacity in the hospital is now so dire that the availability of emergency care can no longer be guaranteed," says Douwe Rijpsma, Emergency Department of the Rijnstate hospital in Arnhem. "There are already situations in which there is no place for patients who are already in the ambulance with us, but also at the hospitals in Ede and Doetinchem immediately surrounding us."
12/22/20
Minister Tamara van Ark (Medical Care and Sport) has announced that Dutch hospitals are temporarily suspending all non-urgent care. This mainly concerns treatments that can wait longer than six weeks, such as groin and hip operations or cosmetic procedures.
But despite this measure, there are major concerns among hospitals. "We are going to have three, four very tough weeks," fears IC head Hans van der Hoeven of Radboudumc, who is also professor of intensive care. “We are now completely full, while the numbers of corona patients will continue to rise for weeks. If it continues like this, everything has to be postponed, this is really a very, very critical period that we are in. ""
"Who does who who doesn't"
It means, among other things, that the hospital is entering the phase where conversations with patients 'will shift'. “If a doctor talks to a patient about a possible admission to the ICU, that conversation will change if you know that there is little space. We notice that things are slowly moving in the direction of "who is who who is not." Unnoticed, without being spoken, you start selecting patients. ""
"The capacity in the hospital is now so dire that the availability of emergency care can no longer be guaranteed," says Douwe Rijpsma, Emergency Department of the Rijnstate hospital in Arnhem. "There are already situations in which there is no place for patients who are already in the ambulance with us, but also at the hospitals in Ede and Doetinchem immediately surrounding us."
