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.

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

Bollocks. So are you proposing that whenever hospitals are overwhelmed for any reason in future, as happens frequently every year, we all need to stay at home and trash our society and economy? Nonsense

An in law's family member in his 50s died this week.
He was admitted to hospital with pancreatitis initially, tested negative for Covid, and afterwards placed on a ward with a positive Covid case. He then tested positive but was discharged.

He returned home but struggled to breathe when he woke up the next day. This triggered a series of small heart attacks. He was resuscitated, but died of a big heart attack en route to hospital in the ambulance.

It's gut wrenching that a healthy father was unlucky enough to suffer a medical emergency and fortunate enough to receive specialist treatment, only to later die in a terrible way due to hospitals not being clear of Covid.

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.

That’s disgusting

I’m so so tired of the nonsense about death certificates from ill-informed gullible fools.

There won’t be death certs that say ‘covid only’ the same as there aren’t any they say ‘flu only’.

There’s respiratory failure due to viral pneumonia due to SARS cov 2 at the very least. Many many people will have multi organ failure due to covid. Some people will have an underlying disease as a contributing factor that will also be included.

This is surely, surely not difficult for even the most basic intelligence to grasp.

@Covidnurse2020

I am a nurse on a Covid ward. It’s been the worst time of my life. A few months ago people were clapping, now I feel insulted thinking back to those claps because I feel everyone who clapped has forgotten us. Since October it’s been way worse than the first wave. But no one cares.

I’ve come home from work sobbing so much my husband can’t get any words out from me. I’ve had to sit with young people with cancer and tell them they’re going to die as treatment isn’t working.

I’ve worked my ass off ALL day trying to save a really poorly patient, to have their relative calling me up 10x complaining about not being able to visit, or annoyed that the patient caught it from x, y, z. Or relatives calling up worried care in the hospital isn’t good enough.

I’m on anti depressants and undergoing counselling just to keep myself going.

I wish I could say I’m over exaggerating, but the fact is I feel every shift I work on the ward we’re locked in the ward and totally forgot about by the outside world.

💐 For you. I'm so sorry you and your colleagues are having to deal with all this. It's beyond awful. I'm so grateful you can do it and the public and myself , we do all appreciate it. The ones that don't are just deranged I'm afraid. The NHS isn't perfect , but staff do care and this year must have been dreadful. Thank you.

Last time I checked , there were just over 100,000 acute and general overnight hospital beds in the English NHS. Of these 5,900 were critical care beds, 70% of which were adult beds, the rest are for children and infants.

That is for a population of over 56 million people.

Now if no-one needed a bed because of the myriad of other reasons that people need those beds, we might possibly be OK, just.

People don't work like that though. Bowels won't suddenly stop obstructing, prostates won't suddenly stop causing issues, lumps and bumps won't suddenly disappear or not appear at all, strokes and heart attacks will not no longer happen, no-one will lose their balance and fall and break something, no-one will develop sepsis, chronic conditions will no longer become acute, nobodies gall bladder will play up, no-one will be have an accident........

@SpikedTea I have three women friends who are police officers in very different roles and I really do appreciate what you go through. Take care xx

MadamBlobby in previous years the level of concern, the overstretched services, staff on their knees has never come close. We are not talking a bit busy. We are talking lack of oxygen, moving someone with appendicitis 250 miles to be seen in an emergency department. We are talking about staff caring for dying colleagues. We are talking people dying from treatable conditions because there aren't ambulance able to get to them.
Yes for a few weeks we need to make sure people are being mindful. That people aren't so drunk they need hospital care. That they aren't involved in alcohol fuelled fights.
We need to keep enough key workers well to maintain essential services.
That might be mildly inconvenient. It might be boring. Some are struggling but its about clinical safety as a priority for health and social care services. If that means the gym is shut, so be it.

I promise you, not everyone has forgotten you *CovidNurse2020’. Every single one of you is a total fucking hero in my eyes.

My little girl had a near fatal reaction to a (common!) virus a couple of years ago. She was in ICU for a period and then in and out of hospital for almost 2 years. The level of care she received was absolutely astounding and I remain grateful each and every day.

I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to cope in the current circumstances, everyone stretched so thin and covered in PPE making reassuring body language and facial expressions that we usually take for granted impossible. You must all be exhausted.

Thank you, for every day you get up, get dressed and continue to put one foot in front of the other. In our house, you are better than Santa, The Easter Bunny and every single super hero combined.

💙🌈❤️

(Midwives, Care assistants, emergency services staff and everyone on the wards or in the clinics from the cleaners to the consultants, Thank you)

Not to try and derailed the thread but after reading up thread some midwives comments I just have to say you are doing amazingly! I was lucky enough to be at my dd1s 1st babies birth and hoping to be at the next (home birth) all the midwives we have encountered have been wonderful and tried really hard to keep things as normal as possible in very difficult times, I know all nurses are working hard just wanted to give a shout out to these guys who seem to be forgotten yet do a fabulous job! Xx

A thank you from me too. Its heartbreaking reading the experiences on here.

I'm so grateful to everybody on the frontline and I'm so sorry you are dealing with this.

I'm a 2nd year student nurse on placement on a covid ward.
I'm broken, emotionally and physically. My face is bruised and peeling skin from the masks, my hands are bleeding from washing them 100+ times a day.
Sometimes I get home from work and sit in the car on my drive and cry for an hour before I can face going home to my 'normal' life, husband, children.
If I actually finish my training I will be beyond amazed, when I started this placement I'd had 5 weeks previous hands on experience, now I'm taking sole charge of bays of 6 patients at a time. There's no empty beds, there wasn't been for 2 weeks, when a bed becomes free it's filled again within minutes of being turned around.
I truly believe many members of staff will suffer ptsd from this, there aren't words for how awful it is.
I'm in my early twenties and have held the hands of dying patients more times than I can count.

Honestly I don’t know what the worst moment working on a Covid ward has been?

Working dangerously short staffed - to the point patients are at risk?

Having to tell people completely alert and aware they are going to die in the next 48 hours and arranging zoom calls with family?

Having to go home and sit isolated due to lockdown not being able to go out and distract my mind from the things I’ve seen?

Watching colleagues so low struggling to get through shifts?

Watching colleagues hand in their notice as they can’t take it anymore?

The fact that management don’t care enough to put on a pair of scrubs and spend 12.5 hours on the ward seeing what it’s really like.

Seeing the look on my husbands face when I’m so low, knowing he is as helpless as me and just has to watch me go through it.

I’ve never felt so angry with the way the NHS has been run... and I LOVE our NHS. But the people who run it have left us working in it to rot.

@Kidsaregrim, I'm awfully confused. Your first post said lots of vaccines were being thrown away because patients weren't turning up and hospitals weren't allowed to use the vaccines on their own staff. Now you say there's an initiative to use them up wherever possible throughout the hospital.

How incredible you as a midwife are involved with the vaccine rollout. I honestly thought every midwife was 300% overworked in an understaffed maternity service. It's amazing you are helping with the vaccine as well.

Please let us know the name of your hospital because I think your local MP and the CEO needs to know what is going on to ensure their local hcps are fully supported by hospital management.

The worst bit was telling family they couldn't visit their dying relative , or could only visit with very stringent restrictions for a very short time (and reliving the death of my mum each time)

DH has got home and said that he has heard that the Pfizer vaccines for his PCN are now likely to be delayed beyond 4th Jan. Patients are understandably very angry and worried.

If you or a relative are waiting for a vaccine, please please try not to take it out on the GP surgery, particularly receptionists. They are desperate to vaccinate eligible people as soon as they can! Stay safe and know that you will be called absolutely asap.

It feels terrible to tell people 'not yet' for them / their relatives when one of the first people to receive the vaccine has just received her second dose, according to BBC news.

To be fair, we are using anyone signed off for IM injections to administer vaccine (usually as bank / extra hours) which would include midwives, so that is not a completely implausible idea.

(We are not discarding anything though, and this is surprising to read)

I wish we could make anyone doubting the severity of the situation work on a Covid ward-except I wouldn't wish that on other staff or patients.

I'd also like to slap any twat prattling on about their 'freedom'

@Kidsaregrim

I've got my sleeve rolled up.. I'll be there!

If it was possible I'd happily queue for 'leftovers' so it's not wasted, but I'd sign a petition to say I'm disgusted it's not being given to whoever is available if there are no shows.

It's criminal it's being poured down the sink!

Wishing you and your DH a speedy recovery, @Fishingforhapiness.

@Ihateme I am not hospital staff but work in the Social Care sector - I had my vaccine today at Great Western Hospital in Swindon - after the vaccine we all had to wait for 15 minutes in a small room for obs - one of the women I was chatting to worked on a Covid ward and said it is ‘horrendous’ - just to be clear, we are in the Southwest - she was looking after a 30 yr old pregnant woman dying of Covid and she said admissions have shot up in the last 2-3 weeks - she said mid January is projected to be the worst period.

@RosesAndHellebores sorry to confuse

No there is no initiative this is what we WANT to do rather than tip the unused vaccine away! If there are people who can have the vaccine within the vicinity let’s give it to them rather than let it go to waste, lots of people have an elderly relative that their vaccine could possibly help!!

I do my hours and covid vaccine as bank, it’s a nice change to do something different, the people who do come in are so so grateful and really want to be there, it’s a nice atmosphere dealing with well people. I’m also considering going to my local secondary school and asking if they would like help with their roll out of the testing but there are not enough days in the week!

What’s bad this time round is that the medics aren’t being supported by a vocal part of the public. Morale is low because it’s the second time they’ve had to deal with this, and now they are being routinely told that they are liars and hoaxers. They’re tired and absolutely had it with people who think they have all the answers after a few David Icke videos

I wonder how many of those now crying "Hoax" were out clapping for the NHS every Thursday?

@Covidnurse2020

Bless you - you’re doing a great job and the work you’re doing right now will be appreciated for years and years to come. I have no idea how ICU nurses do what they do - I’m a carer who worked through a huge outbreak at a carehome back in April - luckily it hasn’t come back (yet) but all the death and suffering was so difficult for residents, families and staff.

Please please look after yourself and know you are massively loved and admired for what you do xx