Increasing capacity in acute day care settings: patients' experiences of a pop-up day care unit

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic imposed unprecedented disruption to global health care service delivery. Healthcare settings had to rapidly adapt to the high demand of acute patient care and the implementation of social-distancing measures to reduce disease transmission. These challenges resulted in the prioritisation of emergency treatment over routine care across the world. In the UK, to cope with the high burden of intensive care patients observed in other countries, five emergency hospitals were opened across the country with a combined capacity to treat almost 10 000 COVID-19 cases. Ultimately, the demand for the Nightingale hospitals failed to materialise (Day, 2020), and most of their beds remained empty.

The ambulatory care settings in Bristol Royal Hospital for Children (BRHC) were significantly impacted by COVID-19 restrictions: bed capacity was considerably reduced and contingency plans were made to transform the unit into an acute adult bed ward should the need arise. This situation forced the paediatric hospital to restructure its traditional provision and to explore new initiatives to ensure the continued delivery of specialist care. Two specialties, paediatric allergy and paediatric gastroenterology, worked collaboratively with hospital management and leadership teams to facilitate the provision of specialist care to their cohorts of patients.