The NHS Nightingale Hospital, Exeter

Simply Cleaning had the honour to help build the latest NHS Nightingale Hospital, based in Exeter back during the start of the coronavirus pandemic. 

Leading UK building contractors BAM Construction managed the project and brought us on board immediately as we are a Constructionline gold cleaning contractor in the South West, and among a very limited number of cleaning companies who hold this accreditation, to say the least. 

The hospital was one of several built around the UK to help relieve the extra strain that was originally planned for when the coronavirus pandemic began.

The hospital was built to provide care for patients suffering from COVID-19 (Coronavirus), mostly for patients from Devon and Cornwall, however, patients from neighbouring counties were also considered if the need happened to arise.

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Thankfully, hospitals across the UK had managed with the extra demand placed upon them, however, key services were majorly disrupted, including cancer diagnosis, cancer treatment and planned surgeries. Some NHS Nightingale Hospitals only had a few patients in them, most had none at all. The South-West had lower than expected transmission rates of COVID-19, so the NHS Nightingale Hospital was essentially unused for its purpose.

The hospital has a total of 116 beds and can to provide extra capacity so the existing five hospitals in the region can continue to operate essential clinical services.

Changes to how the facility would operate and the care it would provide were announced by Health Secretary, Matt Hancock back in June with the plan for it to be converted into a cancer testing centre. 

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This was due to the fears of a cancer time bomb, as leading cancer charities estimate 2.5 million cancer patients have missed vital testing and treatment during the coronavirus lockdown. 

To cope with the huge backlog of cancer patient the hospital was repurposed as a coronavirus-free cancer clinic with CT scanners helping to provide people with safer and faster access to test for a range of conditions.

However, we are now firmly into the cooler seasons of autumn and winter, so there is an expected increase in demand of NHS Hospital beds and ICU patients, which is common for this time of the year anyway.

The NHS Nightingale Hospitals will most likely be on standby, in case the extra facilities are required, but we hope this won’t be necessary, as the saying goes – it’s better to have and not need, than need and not have!

For further information on our construction site cleaning services or our coronavirus prevention cleaning services, please contact our professional cleaning team today! 

Email our cleaning services at info@simply-cleaning-uk.com

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Categorised in: Simply Cleaning News

This post was written by Tony