To ask what NHS frontline staff think of Breathtaking?

[CloudyYellow]

I have watched all 3 episodes. I worked on the frontline during Covid. I found it very triggering and my fury is back.

The book is brilliant and well worth reading, I read it during covid and then read it again a year or so afterwards. I worked ina GP surgery at the time of covid and whilst not stressful like our hospital colleagues, it was still very difficult!

Cant bring myself to watch it. I know others are the same

I won’t watch it - because I’m pretty sure I’d induce the fury and I have enough going on right now. Perhaps at the right time I will, but I imagine it’ll be really triggering.
Edit - frontline worker but on mat leave during the first wave. Second time we were a covid ward when for some unknown reason we had a ‘hot end’ of the ward - I caught it from work while caring for my grandma at home.

I learnt 4 things

1. It was for many a frightening way to die.
2. NHS England should not have been the ones making the clinical decisions .
3. So often there wasn't a right or wrong way to do things , just a choice between bad and very bad.
4. Those of us In less populated areas had it 'easy'.

Apologies in advance as I am not NHS staff, but have friends and family who are. I've watched all three episodes and read every post on here. My heartfelt thanks, gratitude and sympathy to all of you who lived this and have been affected since. I've always had the utmost respect for NHS staff and continue to do so. I'm so sorry for the additional stress you have all endured as a result of the naysayers and conspiracy theorists on top of it all.

The third episode really hit home for me about the chap (I think he was supposedly 68) who had a bowel blockage / tumour but was not operated on due to lack of ICU beds. This has really made me realise how lucky my Mum was. She was 75 and diagnosed with colon cancer in Feb 2020. There were many hospital appointments and I could see what was happening, and worried about her contracting Covid as it hurtled our way from Italy. Initially, she was told she would have the tumours removed via keyhole surgery. On the day of lockdown, her colorectal surgeon said this wouldn't be possible and she would have to undergo a full hartmans procedure. On 30 March 2020, I dropped her off at hospital knowing I wouldn't be able to visit her during her recuperation. She got out of the car and didn't look back at us, as she was so scared it might be the last time she saw us. I worried for her, but I also worried for her surgeon and all of the HCPs involved in her care, as I knew they were all at risk and under such enormous pressure. She was in ICU for almost a week afterwards as she had a reaction to the anaesthetic and low BP. We had the option of speaking via ipad / video, but chose not to as we had an unspoken agreement that it would make it more emotional, and also we just wanted to let the nurses and doctors do their jobs. (I also knew by this point that there were people dying of Covid)

She spent two weeks in hospital and came out to a very strange world, but at least she came out. I'm a single person, so I was able to care for her alongside the district nurses who would drop off packs for me including aprons, masks and dressings. I wore a mask while I tended to her wounds and never hugged her, or stayed too close for too long for fear of passing on Covid. I was a key worker myself and was entitled to a school place for my daughter, but didn't take it up and left my job to keep her safe.

I believe fate played a part in her survival. The timing of her diagnosis and operation at the very start of the Pandemic meant that she was able to get that ICU bed she needed. I also believe that the switch from keyhole surgery to remove the tumours to full hartmans procedure saved her life. I will be forever indebted to her colorectal surgeon and her team.

The selflessness of those NHS staff at that time, and still now, fills me with pride. I have health issues myself, and every time I attend an appointment, I take in some hand made soaps for them (I make them myself) It will never be enough to repay them, though for saving my Mum's life. I know part of it was luck, and there were some horrendous choices that had to be made, but I thank you all from the bottom of my heart for all you did.

My Mum will be 80 this year. Thanks to the wonderful NHS staff that's she is still here and I treasure every extra day she has.

Sorry this seems like a bit of a pointless post in many ways, and only a snapshot of a story within the Pandemic. Yes, the bigger story will be told in time and throughout the future, but this is my thanks to you all.

I can’t watch it.
Non medical people in corridors stopping staff wearing masks in the corridor until the removed them to not be seen in public areas. Threatened with disciplinary action if you kept a mask on.
GPs being given 5 paper masks only to last them all month.

I hope they make Dido Harding, Michelle Mone, and everyone else who lined their pockets, watch this series every single day whilst they are in prison.

I'm ex frontline NHS.

There are no adequate words. Part of me thinks this should be compulsory viewing to hammer it home to the idiots who still think its just a cold.

Anyone who votes Tory should hang their head in shame.

Half way through the second episode and DH and I are both in tears. Neither of us was frontline NHS. How on earth did you get through it, all the fear and pain...just unspeakable.

Haha- no disrespect. Whatever.
I never claimed to be ‘competent’ , I just said what happened.
You didn’t need to put me down like that. Totally uncalled for and you have zero knowledge of what my experience was, and the fact that I stupidly volunteered to work in that area.
Talk about nurses disrespecting nurses.
pretty fucking sure you couldn’t do my job either but whatever. I doubt you’d have the guts to put yourself outside your comfort zone.
You know what- your comment has upset me more than the sodding trolls. Cheers. Come and tell me I’m incompetent to my face.

This is the most enraging part of the whole thing. None of these leeches have faced any consequences whatsoever. Didn't Hancock demand immunity in exchange for testifying?
I still can't understand how 'I can't recall' Sunak and Johnson were allowed to get away with 'losing" their WhatsApp messages.
Where is Dido Harding now?

@peakygold sounds just like someone today I spoke to about the programme who said it wasn't as bad as that and during their discussions with doctors all over the country (they practice alternative medicine so not sure why they were talking to doctors) and apparently all these doctors said their hospitals were empty and it was all a lie by the media, not sure what that reason would be. After a lot of back and forth I no longer class her as a friend. I almost mentioned the vaccines as I know she was very very vocal about that too! Made me so so mad. Thank you for all those that worked so hard and in absolute awful conditions knowing you were facing possible consequences of being around patients but with no back up from the powers that be. That's to all nhs workers, care home workers, bus drivers etc etc etc. Thank you for keeping us as safe as possible xxxx

I'm crying over Davina dying
One of our HCAs very nearly died. He was in hospital for months on ECMO all alone. A young lad, no risk factors except ethnicity.

I also remember them coming around and taking all our FFP3 masks away as we were supposedly 'green zone'. It felt very scary to be left just with a paper mask and a plastic apron dealing with patients who were at least suspected of having Covid and many of them of course did. The whole 'zone' thing was totally dumb as people were most infectious in the 5 day wait for the test to come back before they got shipped to the Red zone. Shutting the stable door. After a while it all collapsed anyway as every ward was a Covid ward. A few months later the policy changed (new evidence aka supply issues resolved) and we got them all back again

Also the sending back to care homes with no testing. I was working on a long stay mental health unit and tried to resist people being sent back to us untested but was screamed at by the acute hospital Drs even though their wards were at times largely empty. It was a huge ethical dilemma: leave the person there where they would likely get Covid if they didn't have it already or let them come back to us and spread it to everyone. We had to let them come and we scrupulously barrier nursed them but inevitably one day it did spread and infected every single patient and staff member and half of the patients died.

Obviously I am used to death but for every single patient to be really ill all at once was
nothing I had ever experienced plus no staff as they were all ill too, phoning everyone's families telling them awful news every day, many of them angry and blaming us and having no effective treatment (we had one oxygen cannister for the whole ward so if the acute would not take them it was basically palliation).
I have locked all those memories down tight but I couldn't carry on my inpatient job after that. I work in the community now.

Do any of you think if the US response had been quicker and tougher that it wouldn't have been so bad? The US had a pandemic action plan that the administration in office failed to use.

I haven’t yet watched, because am unsure how it will make me feel.

I have relatives and friends who work for the NHS. What they went through was horrendous. So many were and continue to affected both only physically but mentally by their experiences of Covid.

Two of my relatives were training to work I the NHS at the time. I recall them saying that initially they had no protection as the hospitals would not supply them with it and it had to come via the medical schools at the Universities where they were training. So when it came, it was of more inferior quality than what was provided for NHS staff. They were given no choice about where they were placed (whilst still waiting for better protection) as were told would fail their courses if objected. Absolutely appalling. Both got Covid a number of times when it was rife.

Recall one of my relatives just absolutely broken on the phone, after caring for a young person (same age) who died during their shift, then coming out to be met by protestors jeering and giving abuse saying Covid was all a hoax.

Our beloved Aunt was in a care home when Lockdown came into place. She died at the beginning of April of natural causes. We weren’t allowed to be with her at the end. A month later we had her funeral which was surreal as there was only a handful of us, including the vicar at a short service. We weren’t allowed to sit together, nor could we gather afterwards to share our memories. Later found out that was one of the dates there was a party held by MPs. Still makes me really angry that so many people died alone, and their families/friends were denied the opportunity to grieve/celebrate their lives together, whilst there was partying going on by MPs.

Horrific watching and nothing but admiration for the frontline staff.

I worked right through, frontline homeless housing, 60hpw and felt sufficiently at risk that I isolated myself and my children went to live with my ex. I isolated my team from each other, enforced a strict one in one out policy on changeover and hoped that would keep us safe.

We were very lucky. COVID didn't hit our town the way it hit others. Nobody I know died or got seriously ill. Remarkably, inspite of a total lack of cooperation from our residents we didn't get it into our buildings until the September and even then it was contained and didn't cause harm. We had it so, so easy comparatively. We merely had the fear and of that I can only ever be thankful. My COVID experience, relatively speaking, was nothing.

At the very start, before lockdown, I'd put things in place. I had an idea of what was coming. I knew and accepted I was at serious risk of becoming a casualty and was frightened. We all were. By fuck was I lucky. My heart goes out to those whose reality was so horrifically different.

I felt anger, frustration, contempt and heartbreak watching this. It felt so very real and those who have posted here back up that feeling. Thank you for what you did, for taking that risk, for what you gave up.

For me, the strangest, overriding thought while watching was how quickly we have moved on, put it in the past, forgotten, buried it...it is SO recent FFS!

I can’t watch this as there are no subtitles (same with Mr Bates) but I’m not sure I could face it in any event.

im not NHS but work in children’s social care. My sw were going into hundreds of homes, schools etc with no PPE and no way of social distancing depending on the home.

we lost several colleagues and a dear friend of mine caught covid from a home visit which she passed to her husband and child who both died.

these things will never be forgiven or forgotten. I think people really struggle to comprehend that people were willingly going to work knowing it could kill them but they were doing so to help others.

I don’t begrudge the NHS anything

Wow, calm down. I’m literally stating facts. I’m not saying that YOU were incompetent, I’m saying that you could not have been competent at that role. It’s impossible. This is not an opinion but a fact. You can’t walk into any specialised area and be competent at it after half an hour of training.

Of course I couldn’t walk into a new role and be competent after half an hours training. Duh. Stop being so angry.

It does not 'take years' to operate and monitor a ventilator.
Anyone can be shown vert quickly. Of course they would then be supervised and have an experienced ICU nurse on hand but I heard of this exact situstion in the pandemic where instead of 1:1 ICU nurses had 1:2 or even 1:3 with odps and ward nurses working alongside them.

I'm NHS hospital, but not clinical. I don't think I can watch it.
One thing I would say is that at my trust, there was never a time when we didn't have enough PPE. However the issue was the constant changes in guidance which scared staff - for example one minute it was standard masks only, the next FFP3 had to be worn, and then a few days later it would be back to standard masks. How is that supposed to reassure staff that we were keeping them safe? It just felt like the rules were being made up at a national level as we went along...

It was an ever changing situation. Therefore rules and guidelines changed weekly or daily. It was chaos globally I've no idea why some folk seem to think itv have unearthed something like the post office scandal.

It was global.

Try downplay it all you want to but it has been proven that the government had plenty of opportunities to act sooner/make better decisions in the interests of the citizens of this country and they chose not to. Many decisions were made to cover up their mismanagement of the situation, not because evidence was pointing in the direction they chose.

It has also been proven that instead of giving contracts to known PPE providers who could have sourced what we NHS staff desperately needed in a timely manner, they chose to line the pockets of their friends who had no prior experience. The end result was billions of pounds wasted and no protection for staff on the front line until it was too late

I am also most furious about the fact that no one has faced any consequences to date for the mess they caused

I have chosen not to watch this as I suspect it would make me very angry.I went back to the NHS as a volunteer during the lockdowns. I was often the first line of contact as people walked through the hospital door. I was given a paper mask as protection. The complete lack of care and consideration from management was astounding (and reminded me why I had left the NHS in the first place). I left when I was told that, despite performing the same tasks as paid staff, I would not be entitled to either a flu or Covid vaccine as I didn’t have a payroll number. By a manager who spent her days hidden behind a screen or a locked door. Many front line staff gave their everything (some were volunteers). We were exhausted and frightened yet those further up just didn’t seem to care

I don't really blame anyone
We didn't know much about the virus so no-one knew what to do for the best hence the every changing guidance
If there's a scandal it's that the country was not prepared.

Politicians breaking the rules they had laid down for everyone else boils my piss though. That is a scandal. One of our nurses retired after 40 years in the NHS and we had to have a 'Zoom' party which was shit and much less than she deserved. It was bizarre because we all worked together all day, had all had Covid anyway but weren't allowed a 'social gathering' after work. We considered breaking the rules and agreed not to because despite there being no realistic chance of it increasing infections it would be unethical and set a bad example. Clearly Boris and co did not feel the same way.

I am glad that things have gone back to normal and it all feels a bit surreal now.
The fallout of lockdown is real. We are still not over the backlog of services being cancelled and people deteriorating with no routine healthcare. The increase of domestic abuse and child abuse is horrifying and the impact on children's education. These are real but the impact of Covid was real too.
I think the drama is good for reminding us that people really were dying, there really were no staff, it wasn't unnecessary to lock down despite the costs.
We could have made a different choice, not locked down and tried to carry on as usual but that would have meant letting a lot of people die in bad circumstances. I don't know if people would accept that in reality.

I worked in ITU all the way through then ironically caught Covid from DP and ended up with LC. I’m sure I’ve developed some element of PTSD (as have some of my ITU colleagues) as I now have huge health anxiety. It was an awful time. Patients awake and reading the paper, doing the crossword dying within 12 hours. Holding an iPad to a dying patients ear so his family could say goodbye. Cardiac arrests going on simultaneously whilst other patients were suddenly desaturating, others needing proning, supining, admissions, deaths, all at the same time, just makes me shudder at the memory.