To think the NHS should have sent her home

[YeahWhatevver]

BBC News - Coronavirus: Witney nurse, 84, dies from Covid-19
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-52344408

Why is an 84 year old allowed to continue to work in the NHS given all the guidelines on isolation of the vulnerable and social distancing?

I imagine if this was "84 year old dies while continuing to work at an Amazon distribution warehouse" there'd be outrage.

Employers really do have a duty of care to their employees and in this case I think that's not been maintained by the trust.

They should have 100% said thanks for being willing to work but we need you to go home and stay safe now.

^mid 70s^ shes worth rather more than 7p

@cottonwoolbrain does your relative have an opinion on the fact that the stretched NHS would have to care for her if she got it?

That’s very patronising OP, she knew what she was doing, the job she loved, she knew the risks too.

I don't want to speak ill of the dead, but would she have been able to carry out her duties as effectively as a younger auxiliary? I wouldn't be happy about being cared for by an 80+ nurse. Sorry if that sounds ageist. In many professions there is an upper age limit because after a certain age, it is recognised that people can no longer do their jobs as safely. There were other ways she could have helped out her community that didn't involve putting herself and possibly her patients at risk...

I’d be more than happy to be cared for by an 84 year old nurse. Someone that age would have been well trained in the pre degree days, with a wealth of experience.

Argumetnativeaardvark Apparently her intention to to sign a DNR. I really am rather fond of her and would prefer to have her about but if she really wants to do this... she will. She's very determined. I'm not sure how many female consultants there were in the mid 1970s but she was one of them.

@cottonwoolbrain thanks. However people with DNRs still need care; still burdens the NHS.

I would have thought there would have, quite rightly, been age discrimination issues in turning her down.
The wider issue is that we seem to have a very unhealthy relationship with old age: desperate to ensure quantity over quality of life, and with a tendency to infantilise older people.
She made an informed choice and had capacity to do so.

Just an opinion on the pregnancy thing. Not all pregnant nurses were given the choice. I had to take the decision to go off sick at 31 weeks pregnant as my trust wanted me to carry on working and being in contact with potential Covid patients. I wasn’t prepared to take that risk.

It’s very sad that an 84 year old health professional has lost her life, but from the sounds of things she loved her job, knew the risks and chose to carry on despite them. What a legend.

Remember the hospital who "let go" a very elderly admin lady, and we sued for age discrimination. They can't "make" people not work if they want to.

They are asking all those in a certain category to shield. There is no demand or law.

A nurse is a certain type of person and very vocational in personality. It's very likely she couldn't sit at home knowing what was going on. She made a choice knowing the risks.

Extremely sad she dies but she would have known that. The same way people who take on mountain climbs etc know the risks.

She dies a hero on the frontline of NHS and active rather than a slow depressing half existence in a care home or home alone.

My mum has cancer. She is on chemo. In her mid 60's and teaches. She is completely devastated that she'll probably have to retire now because it's unlikely it'll be safe for her to work in a school for a good 12-18 months at least. She also knows she probably has a few years at best and didn't and doesn't actually want to spend them living a half life. But she is shielding for this 3 months.

I know staff who are in the vulnerable group and have been told they have to come into the hospital every day to do admin work, even with a government letter telling them to shield for 12 weeks. They couldn’t be in a worse place than a large hospital ffs.
Other staff who have had covid 19 told they must return after 7 days even though they still have symptoms.
NHS trusts can really take the piss when it comes to sickness guidelines. Ultimately they don’t care at all about staff. I’m constantly shocked by what goes on.

There are lots of people well over 70 working for my trust, especially in the catering and domestic departments, I am all for people working if they want and feel able, however these are really physical roles whereby they are really knackered most of the time. On the wards we hear them moaning and complaining how tired they are, they just can't meet the physical demands and amount of work for the job, we do have a lot of great chats with them, lots of fun, but you can't help feel they are there for the company most of the time and the NHS policy protects them so it's a almost like they will work until they drop, the work is secondary. Incidentally now that the over 70's are shielded, our trust has lost loads of these people, resulting in huge amounts of under staffing.This has caused a lot of resentment with the staff left behind to cope with the added pressures of C19 It's great that people feel they want to work (or need to?), but I know I most certainly don't want to , and would hate one of my parents to still be working at that age.

I must add, that I do admire this lady for giving her all to the NHS, looking after others to the very end, my deepest sympathies to her family and friends

I'm a nhs manager. I'm appalled this woman was still working clinically. I've sent an employee in their mid seventies home and am arranging home working for them. I've negotiated shielded status and medical suspension for another. If this woman had been my employee I would have transferred her away from direct clinical duties on a temporary basis. It would have been my responsibility to do that because I have an obligation to ensure her health and safety at work.

She was a nurse @cookingmywaythroughlockdown. She knew what she was doing and what she wanted to do. It’s not for managers to prevent staff from doing the job they’re employed for.

She was working as a HCA and it's absolutely for managers to prevent staff from working in an unsafe way.

So you’d have lost her entirely and taken away her reason for living. I bet I know which she and her patients would prefer.

YABBU. Not all 84 year olds are made the same. She made a choice and she decided that the benefit to her and her patients outweighed the risks.

Maybe you can't force anyone home, not sure. I know where I work (not NHS) we kept asking every day as we did have vulnerable people but I couldn't force them home.

Take away her reason for living? Or just go for the straightforward death sentence that's working on a ward at that age with covid about?

I would have deployed her to another area away from patients. In doing so possibly avoiding a pretty grim death for her. That's what should have happened. I'm horrified by this case tbh.