Thread by @petermbenglish

"Should single rooms be the default for NHS inpatients?" posits @mancunianmedic.

Obviously, it's not possible now, and could take several decades.

The current pandemic - and the previous flu pandemic - emphasised the need for more single rooms…
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bmj.com/content/375/bm…

We needed more single rooms, ideally with negative pressure lobbies, to prevent transmission of airborne diseases.

Covid-19 won't be the last such pandemic.

So, if only for infection control purposes, we need more such rooms.

And yet…
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I looked into the regulations during the flu pandemic.

Not only were there no standards for the number of respiratory infection safe rooms a hospital (even new-builds) should have, regulations on eg the minimum distance between beds were extremely weak or non-existent.
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I think the regulations on bed distances might have firmed up very slightly. But there's little or nothing to stop developers from building hospitals without adequate space and few or no respiratory infection rooms, or to prevent hospital overcrowding.
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