Hospital staff, tell us the reality

[Ihateme]

I’m am so fed up of seeing people comment on here that schools should be going back, that people should not be reporting mass gatherings in tier 4, how dare people begrudge a child their birthday party etc...

The hospitals are in a worse state now than they were during the first peak. Would any doctors or nurses care to confirm this? Maybe then these Mumsnetters will get the message.

My staff, oh my staff have worked so bloody hard all year, we are exhausted and demoralised. The public support has vanished - while it might not have seemed much at the time, without it life feels like one long invisible slog.

Sorry for going on and on. I'm on a few days off. The guilt for not volunteering for even more extra shifts....

You know you can fully believe that COVID is real and that hospitals are under a lot of pressure as well as questioning whether it’s right to lock up your population and destroy the economy for the next 10 years for it? - and to question how much of an impact on the total deaths the later will even have?

Has it always been understood that once hospitals near full capacity that we take away freedoms? People are right to debate this.

My daughter works on a covid ward. She has recently gone back after being off sivk with covid.
There are serious staff shortages as staff are either self isolating or off with covid.

The ICU is full of covid patients and there are 159 in total hospitalised.
All elective surgery has now stopped.

She has just had a message saying that oxygen is running out now

Most days she has more than one death or her ward. She had 4 in a few hours once

She comes home mentally and physically drained by it all.

@zigaziga

You know you can fully believe that COVID is real and that hospitals are under a lot of pressure as well as questioning whether it’s right to lock up your population and destroy the economy for the next 10 years for it? - and to question how much of an impact on the total deaths the later will even have?

Has it always been understood that once hospitals near full capacity that we take away freedoms? People are right to debate this.

We need to be particularly careful when those freedoms so negatively impact the most vulnerable in society.

I do not know any answers just reporting facts

My industry and my other daughter's has been decimated by covid so we all just want it over for our own different reasons

Perhaps NHS staff are too busy saving lives to come on here and explain how bad it is. The facts pretty much speak for themselves. There’s more people on hospital now then the April peak. If people don’t take this seriously they’re idiots, and no stories on here are going to persuade them.

I don’t work on a covid ward, I work in maternity. It’s horrible, we have our own covid ward. We see people regularly in the community with covid because antenatal and postnatal appointments are still going ahead.

We have very little regard given to us, oh your maternity you don’t need lateral flow kits etc, even though we see a huge number of positive women (but people think covid gives a free pass to pregnant women).

You go into a home and ask why little Johnny is home from school and are told “oh he is isolating as he has the covid” and you didn’t tell anyone? As HCP’s we don’t get the respect that we could potentially go home to vulnerable family members.

The NHS is notorious for bullying, imagine that on top of covid, many staff off because of self isolation etc, many more off because they can’t cope with the bullying and mental exhaustion of being treated like absolute shit!

So many amazing people have generously in the first wave, what the media and nhs bosses did not tell people is that we wasn’t given lunch breaks to go and get the food, the office dwellers (ie band 8’s and above) would never think to go and get us some food, but they would come and check the checks had been done and shout us down if we had been to busy to check the equipment that day!

We have an amazing vaccine, we are pouring doses down the sink because of the shelf life and people not coming for the vaccine, god forbid we give that vaccine to our colleagues - nope you are not elderly and do not work in a care home so are not allowed so you watched it binned in front of you.

Morale is SHIT! Support is SHIT! Managers are SHIT! The job is SHIT!

They will not have staff left once they have worked us to the bone then beaten us until we work some more until we have nothing left!

One minute media tells us we’re all going to die then says the next minute that only 371 deaths have been due to Covid with no other prevailing health factors

Hang on, where did the 371 come from?? The NHS figures back in September said it was about 1300 if memory serves, though admittedly that was for all ages ... is the 371 for an age-specific group perhaps?

We need to be particularly careful when those freedoms so negatively impact the most vulnerable in society. That’s fine and I agree. But it’s not black and white, anyone can see that. The debate is on which shade of grey you draw the line.

Personally I wouldn’t be going to a party right but I think not letting my children socialise with even one other child is too far.

You could go much harsher and weld people’s doors shut like they did in Wuhan. I don’t see that many people arguing that we should get rid of support bubbles completely either but that’s not risk free is it? People seemed pretty supportive (rightly IMO) of the woman who was meeting family for a late Christmas when one of the party was terminally ill.

Should we have locked down when we had a bad-ish flu year in 2018? That would have saved lives.

I don’t understand why it’s wrong to debate this.

I don’t think anyone is being critical of doctors and nurses, just nhs management who seem to be shit all round, Covid or not.

Mp posted this earlier

.

The argument about conspiracy theories aside, the angry, rabid people attacking anyone for ever asking a question that doesn’t fit the mainstream narrative is a bit worrying. This thread is a good example. You don’t have to assume that OP is a conspiracy nut just because she asked a question. To be honest you sound more unhinged for frothing at the mouth than the conspiracy theorists do for peddling conspiracies.

@Cecily42

Can’t you just watch the news? It should tell you all you need to know .

😂😂😂😂😂

These threads are full of staff saying how bad it is, Twitter is full of doctors/nurses etc in London/south warning how bad it is. People choose to believe it just like a normal Winter as numbers aren’t up and 1000’s aren’t dying daily. 500 daily isn’t scary enough. This isn’t a normal winter.

There’s always a friend of a friend who says wards are empty. We aren’t in the south and we are in black alert a lot of the time as we are very busy as it’s winter, covid cases are lower atm. But are increasing so two weeks time probably will be where London is at.

Never mind the logistics of a new highly contagious illness that we are still learning to treat that no one has immunity to. it’s just like flu apparently no big deal!.... flu always fills up 5/6/7 wards plus additional critical care beds too, in December.

People are in denial this is a global pandemic affecting the world not just us. Until it affects them personally they just don’t want to know, what else can people do to try and get the message home?

Watch BBC Hospital series the last few episodes of the most recent series are filmed just as the London cases start rising again to gain an idea but even then it’s nothing like now.

If anyone is interested, hospital data by day, month etc can be found here

www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-hospital-activity/

Kids are grim
I can imagine how shit it is. My late sil was a paramedic in London and then in Norfolk for 25 years and she never had a good word to say about the NHS ever.
Pouring the vaccines away isn't what you see on bbc news.
Maybe a documentary maker might tell us the truth one day of what it's really like.
Thank you to all the key workers who have to put up with bad managers and bullying and impossible work conditions.
It must be hell for so many.

I work in NHS hospital, as a HCA. Usually a trauma and orthopaedic ward, now a Covid ward (with still some orthopaedic patients but they mostly have Covid too).

There are staff shortages, as several staff off with not just usual winter bugs, but self-isolating due to positive Covid tests.

During the summer, although we had Covid patients, the rest of the hospital was quiet, as many people avoided hospital if they could, and summer tends to be quieter anyway due to more other viruses etc.

Now the hospital is really busy. Elective surgery has been stopped again. Our ward has more patients than we can safely look after. Many of them are on oxygen, and we are struggling to find enough oxygen points for them. People are dying (one on my ward died on Christmas Day). We are not able to do our job properly, we feel so frazzled it's only a matter of time before serious mistakes are made, because we will eventually forget something vital.

It's definitely much busier than in the first wave. Then the Covid wards were keeping patients in either a side room or one or maybe two per 6 bedded bay. Now we have bays full of patients and no more staff than we had in the summer. Yes, we are really stretched.

the angry, rabid people attacking anyone for ever asking a question that doesn’t fit the mainstream narrative is a bit worrying

I agree, but then so is some of the censorship going on
It's obviously right that links to outright charlatans are deleted, but so was one to the CDC of all places - and I don't understand that at all

"Watch BBC Hospital series the last few episodes of the most recent series are filmed just as the London cases start rising again to gain an idea but even then it’s nothing like now."

It really gives me the rage that hospital infection control staff and admin staff spend time on bloody TV crews!

I know some paramedics in Surrey. Some people have been waiting 14 hours for ambulances. Staff are being asked to not have their time off, or if they do take their time off, to be on the phones to reassure those while waiting 14 hours for an ambulance.

I don’t understand why it’s wrong to debate this

it isn't - no one has said you can;t discuss the pro's and cons of different approaches to a pandemic - the issue is with pople refusing to accept there is one!

@Kidsaregrim
Well done for speaking out! I also work in maternity and feel exactly the same.
We didn’t get the free pizzas and treats, that goes to the office staff. We have to wear masks to protect everybody else but patients and their birth partners don’t have to wear masks to protect US.
Morale is massively shit. I read on here people thinks it’s a great time to get pregnant! Well go ahead, but there’ll be barely any staff to give you maternity care, which you’ll then complain on here about.
I can’t wait to leave the NHS!
Also, actual facts, we’ve had approximately 10 pregnant women who came back as covid positive and only one of them was actually unwell. The other 9 patients didn’t even know they had Covid, it was only because we test every patient coming into hospital. No symptoms, no long covid, babies were fine and they were sent home.
The irrational scaremongering has to stop!

Oh, and I'm lucky that the staff on my ward are great, manager is supportive, but there's only so much you can do with lots of ill patients and not enough staff.

We need to be particularly careful when those freedoms so negatively impact the most vulnerable in society

Who have you decided falls into this category?