Health Services: Coronavirus

(asked on 23rd March 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what training they plan to provide to health services personnel in the use of ventilators during the COVID-19 pandemic.


Answered by
Lord Bethell Portrait
Lord Bethell
This question was answered on 7th April 2020

A far wider range of staff than usual will be involved in directly supporting patients with respiratory needs. Refresher training for all clinical and patient-facing staff will be provided within the next fortnight. A cross-specialty clinical group supported by the Royal Colleges is producing guidance to ensure learning from experience here and abroad is rapidly shared across the United Kingdom. This will include a short education package for the entire National Health Service workforce; a service guide, including for anaesthetics and critical care; and COVID-19 clinical management guides in collaboration with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.

As part of the ‘Your NHS Needs You’ recruitment drive, 15,266 former professionals in England have so far come forward to help the NHS tackle COVID-19 and will start being deployed from this weekend. This includes 5,117 doctors, 5,605 nurses and midwives and 3,686 allied health professionals and pharmacists. From next week, 5,750 final year medics and 17,000 final year nursing students in England will be asked to consider moving into frontline placements with appropriate support.

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