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AMA says if NSW were to expand ICU capacity to 2,000 beds the hospital system wouldn’t be able ‘to treat anything else besides Covid’. Photograph: Dan Himbrechts/EPA
Patients in Sydney hospitals receiving lower levels of care will need to be moved into their homes and cared for primarily by GPs if the city’s hospitals are to stand any chance of coping with surging cases of Covid, the Australian Medical Association has warned.
AMA vice president Chris Moy, has accused the Berejiklian government and health authorities of being “flippant” in insisting the NSW health system can expand its intensive care capacity to 2,000 beds, warning that if it is able to source enough staff to care for that many patients, hospitals would be in a state of “catastrophe”.
For 2,000 ICU patients to be cared for, he warns not all staff would be sufficiently skilled and the hospital system wouldn’t have capacity “to treat anything else besides Covid in hospitals”.
Moy’s comments follow Guardian Australia revealing that overworked Sydney intensive care nurses are increasing sedative doses for some patients in order to manage their workload, claiming pressure from the Delta outbreak makes it impossible to monitor all of their patients in an ICU environment one nurse labelled a “hellhole”.
Source: The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/austral...e-in-sydney-hospitals-if-cases-surge-ama-says