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.

I think the issue is what is described as coping vs overwhelmed

On the whole people did receive care but on many occasions this care was not to the standard that they would otherwise have received and people certainly did die who would not have done if they had received care as usual eg Cancer operations were cancelled, 2ww cancer diagnosis clinics and chemo sessions were cancelled. People were redeployed to jobs that in normal times they would not have been allowed to do without extra training but expected to muddle on doing their best. Coping with a surge' seems to understate the cost and the quality of the 'coping'

I have no idea on the technicalities of theatre vs ICU ventilators but the point seems to be that yes a level of care was able to be provided but it was inferior to what would normally have been done and what is best practice and thus can hardly really be described as 'coping'

Healthcare staff really feel this 'moral injury' of not being able to care for people properly to the standards we want to uphold. Right now it is still going on. We have a huge staffing crisis due to post pandemic backlog and burn out, Brexit and the cost of living and I cannot still now provide the standard of care I want to for my patients as there are not enough staff to do it.

In a pandemic yes. Coping is quadrupling critical care capacity and managing patients in temporary safe places, like theatres. Beiing overwhelmed would be not quadrupling capacity swiftly and hand ventilating in corridors, as I keep saying. Not sure what folk aren't grasping here.

Yes to a pp who has said why tf has China never been held to account it's crazy how they've just got away with it.

Being overwhelmed is not having adequate PPE that gives the level of protection that other countries provided to their staff. Being overwhelmed is running dangerously low on oxygen when dealing with a pandemic where a respiratory virus is spreading. Being overwhelmed is not having enough staff to care for the number of patients in the hospital because they are off sick themselves after catching the virus (due to not having PPE as above). Being overwhelmed is having staff who have never been trained to use equipment, being forced to use it after a quick demo. Being overwhelmed is not having enough beds to care for the number of patients coming through the door and staff having to make decisions on who gets treatment and who is left to die (when all would ordinarily have qualified for full treatment and intervention).

The only person not grasping the reality of what faced us is you. And funnily enough, you STILL haven’t told us what your job is or what you were doing in March 2020 when we locked down

I think what we are not grasping (because you are repeatedly failing to tell us) is the professional experience that has apparently led you to this notion. If you are a ICU professional, I think that we might take on board your view because you have lived experience of dealing with COVID.

Otherwise, um, not so much.

PrescribingMum and others on here who do have professional experience of caring clinically for people at that time - thank you so much for all you did and all you continue to do.

I'm not medical but I believe you when you say things were dire and that units were overwhelmed.

Of course she isn’t an ICU professional who worked through March 2020 in a UK hospital. No one who genuinely had that experience would be so flippant

Indeed. It's sobering even trying to imagine what it must have been like.

Wow. Just wow at this comment.

I’ve come back to this thread and I’m aghast. I think I was an early poster who said I was a teacher and even I was triggered but acknowledged what I experienced can not be compared to a frontline NHS worker.

I deleted Facebook in 2020 as I became depressed with 1. The teacher hate and 2. The “loving life” statuses. I can not even begin to comprehend how that must have felt to someone working 15+ hour days in conditions.

Ever thought why the dancing videos existed? When you are a public worker, you feel the need to help society. My children’s teachers posted happy videos but I know they felt the fear like I did. They just wanted to lessen that fear.

If you can make judgements, then you were in a privileged position. You were safe.

Are we talking about Dr Rachel Clarke who wrote it, apparently a palliative care doctor and a vocal leftie. Nope, she certainly wasn't an ICU professional.

She worked in hospital on the front line through the pandemic, treating patients with Covid irrelevant of her political stance. Not in ICU but the only person who keeps bringing up the ventilators is you.

I repeat once again - what did you do during the first lockdown and what are your qualifications? Your reluctance to share this speaks volumes

I repeat once again - what did you do during the first lockdown and what are your qualifications? Your reluctance to share this speaks volumes

I'm invested in knowing as well now 😁

To all fellow HCP does it really matter to us the opinions of @Janiie and @peakygold
They are obviously so knowledgeable they knew exactly what was going on in every hospital up and down the UK.
Their opinions mean absolutely nothing to me.
As for guessing what @Janiie does for a living I couldn't give a rats arse.
We know the truth and that is all that matters.

FFS. Are you 12?

From previous threads, someone with the name Janiie and writing with the same tone , was a huge supporter of Boris Johnson.

No, I'm stating facts. Google her. ITV could've perhaps picked a more impartial person and I doubt a palliative care doctor has any clue on the demands on critical care in normal times let alone in a pandemic.

You do know Janiie that doctors train in different areas before they qualify...

i spoke to palliative care doctors (my mum died of cancer in a hospice in March 2021 and we were able to spend very limited time with her} and heard their harrowing stories.
palliative care doctors were often redeployed to cover the COVID wards and in many cases palliative care wards were turned into COVID wards. These trained palliative care doctors are trained to make the patients final days as comfortable as possible - this they couldn’t do during COVID. Often patients would be on the wards for a few hours before dying and the numbers flowing through the wards were large on a scale no professionals were used to. Doctors holding the hands of patients as they passed and then simply having to quickly move to the next dying person within minutes having either phoned or FaceTimed on their own devices families to let the see/hear their loved ones final breaths.
Writing it all down was probably her way of coping with this totally horrendous situation and coping with the next day.
don’t be so idiotic or stupid to assume the writing took place because she had loads of time on her hands and fancied a new hobby.

I'm not NHS, but was absolutely horrified at how much of what was going on was kept from the general public at the time when health care workers were living, and dying in this nightmare! I was planning on watching it back to back, but after 1 and a half episodes couldn't cope with any more, and thankfully the only person I lost was an acquaintance, but he was a strong and fit man, and even that really rocked me, but to see what you guys who worked through it, went through, breaks my heart, and I can only say a heartfelt THANK YOU!

You deliberately misunderstood, of course. What qualifications do you have either to comment on Rachel Clarke’s understanding of critical care, or to conclude that the NHS was not overwhelmed?

I don’t need to google her, btw. I’ve been following her work since long before Covid.

So we still haven't established what Janiie was doing while the rest of us were layered up sweating and scared senseless....interesting. I'll pop back later see if we've made any progress 🤔.

I watched it but I felt it lost its way in the 3rd episode. There are parts I would have put in it, such as, the first lockdown being treated as a holiday for those on furlough. If was hard going out to work feeling scared you might get the virus whilst others were having bbqs in their gardens

And I felt just before the second lockdown my colleagues were being taken out left, right and centre. One almost died in ITU. A lot went on to have long Covid and their lives were never the same again

She is a DOCTOR as she has done an MBBS. What are your qualifications?

Yes, and it was absolutely clear that the. ‘Policy’ on level 3 PPE was driven by lack of PPE rather than what staff needed to be safe.
We were scrambling around to get even basic PPE during that first lockdown. Having daily calls from other hospitals to see if we could send over stock from our supplies - when you really weren’t sure if replacement stock would be in the pipeline.
We had instructions from supply chain that the PPE we received, could only be used within the NHS system, but a lot of hospital sent PPE stock to care homes etc as soon as we could.
Several times I had to retrieve ‘recalled’ PPE from wards on instruction from NHS supply chain …. because of various ‘fit for purpose’ issues. Probably manufactured by mates of the Tory party.
Every night I came home to the news …being told that everything was managed by Boris et al. It was a joke.
I lost faith in the government completely but gained so much respect for all ordinary professionals doing their jobs in the worse of times.