Thread for NHS staff

[LucheroTena]

How prepared do you think your place of work is? I work clinically in large teaching hospital and not at all confident we’re ready. Outside of wards there is very little planning and yet we have massive outpatient services. Elective stuff is being limited now but nowhere near enough capacity will be created. Millions in deficit so we’re operating on skeleton workforce and even when we can recruit no one wants to work here. Dozens of calls to our small team each day from worried patients, it’s taking up so much time to answer them all on top of already manic workload. Loads of staff with symptoms that are concerning but we’re not swabbing them and 111 uninterested unless they’ve travelled. Admin staff gleeful that they might soon be ‘working’ from home when truth is it’s difficult to get them to do much work on site let alone unsupervised. It doesn’t feel as though there is much consideration for clinical staff and now we’ll no doubt also be burdened with doing the jobs of admin. Never been as close to saying stuff it and quitting.

Yes, large London hospital.

We haven't been told how the staff contracted it. We've been told by the powers that be that we should only test patients that have respiratory symptoms and then this has to be sanctioned by a consultant and the site managers informed to ensure we are managing the patient correctly.

One of my colleagues from a different ward cared for a patient for 2 long days early last week that then went on to test positive. They are still expected in to work and they still haven't been tested.

We have a ward dedicated to Covid patients, the rest are cohorted in bays in wards around the hospital.

I've contacted occ health to try and clarify the trusts position on testing staff consider my management will only pay for Covid related sickness if we test positive.

I have not had word from my manager nor occ health.

@Atla you have done the right thing.

I'm a GP and I'm self isolating as I have mild respiratory symptoms and my son has similar with a fever. Until today, we would only have to isolate for 7 days. Now it's 14 and my non symptomatic children have to stay home too.

The CCG won't allow me to be tested as I'm not front line staff but the practice is now one GP down and if more of us are ill, we'll be shafted. If I tested negative I could get back to work, I would usually work with my mild symptoms but I'm following the advice as I'm worried about vulnerable patients in case it is Covid-19.

I wonder if it would be more like they would lose their supernumery status and be counted as actual staff rather than actually working as a nurse. More like enhanced health care assistants.

If this does happen, I sincerely hope they get the proper remuneration. It will be a fucking travesty that these students, most of whom are paying their own fees etc, will be working FOR FREE on the frontlines.

We’ve lots of cases. PPE is a joke. Stopping lots of cancer treatments. Clinical staff being redeployed into staffing wards while their own service is abandoned. Admin staff being encouraged to ‘work’ from home leaving phones unanswered.

Nurses are being treated as cannon fodder. It’s apparently ok to ask them to work in areas they don’t feel competent in, leave their own patients unattended, commute on tubes, work long hours, be warned that their leave might be cancelled, cover the jobs of others. I was very close to walking out today and can see plenty of us doing this over the coming days and weeks. We haven’t even been promised more pay at the end of it. They can fuck off!!! There. I feel better.

Are most of you in London ?

I'm in Yorkshire.

Full blown snotty nose and husky voice today but no cough or temp so I'm going in.
Our trust announced last night that they will start swabbing staff today so they can come back to work if negative.

You are all amazing. I can't begin to imagine what you're going through. I don't think any of us know the full picture.

Thank you 💖💐 Xx

You are all amazing

This is nice and all (and no offence to you Helen) but it's so empty. I don't want to die and have people say "ah she died bravely helping people". I'm not brave. I want to just stay in my home and post toilet paper memes online like everyone else.

Management has contacted all of us ex nurses now working as OT, podiatrists etc. I haven't done any nursing for 15 years. I could be sent back to the wards if it all kicks off like Italy. I'm not sure in what capacity. yet.
But I know I've been asked as I live alone with no dependents. I'm dreading it as I left nursing after burnout and a breakdown but I'll do what I'm asked to do.

@madcatladyforever in all honesty- don’t do it. They have no loyalty, you won’t be thanked, you are mere cannon fodder. You left after a breakdown, where was the care for you then? I honestly think the government are going to have to reap the realities of what they’ve done to the health service and it’s staff. Why help them out?

That’s my fear as well madcat I work in a non frontline clinical role which is a bit specialist. There is talk of redeploying us to wards and front line services. That’s all fine and well. But again, I’ve not been frontline for a good number of years. You don’t use skills you lose them. So I’m not sure how much use I would be.

But also what it might do to my mental health being put under that pressure.

Thank you to all of you from the bottom of my heart - it just doesn't get said enough ..😔

It also says in new policy that we can’t refuse to be redeployed.

I’m a specialist palliative care nurse in an acute hospital in Essex. Have to go all over the hospital, including ITU. Already there aren’t enough side rooms, so ?covid patients are nursed in bays with pointless PPE, next to other vulnerable patients.

I think pretty soon our team will be moved to staff wards etc & there will be a very minimal (if any) palliative care service. Understandably worried how this will impact the group of patients we care for.

Wards have been told to restrict visiting to one person per patient. In reality this is pointless. Relatives will end up waiting in corridors, trying to come in etc, different people coming at different times. There is no way of ‘policing’ the same relative visiting each time either. I cannot understand why they have not enforced a blanket ban (apart from maternity / paces / dying patients). The hospital will still be swarming with people.

I really cannot see how the health service will cope. I spoke to a community hospice colleague, who manages the care team (providing personal care etc in peoples homes), and 3 of her staff are having to self isolate at present. They will not be tested. This means they are struggling with their existing case load, and cannot take on any more patients. This is already holding up discharges for patients ready to go home. I can only imagine this is the case for hundreds of care teams and companies across the country, and will only get worse. This will mean even more acute beds will be taken up by patients who don’t need or want to be there.

*paeds

There’s a real lack of awareness (I would say a defiant lack as certainly the evidence is clear) among corporate staff and even matrons about the fact most patients are managed outside of hospitals. And what will happen to said patients when their skeleton support staff are taken away to work wards. In my small team we prevent dozens of hospital admissions every day. These patients will present to A&E in our absence.

De-lurking for support - thanks for starting the thread OP.

I'm frontline as part of an ambulance crew. It is very busy, PPE is available but stocks are running low. Every potential respiratory call (unsurprisingly we have a lot either via 111 or 999 systems) requires mask,apron,gloves then further ppe for agp that paramedics do. That means we go through a lot of the equipment multiple times a shift.

My other concern is rightly GP and other services are using telephone to assist patient, but we are still going to all calls from the usual chest pain to rtc. We obviously still need to attend these but as we go in and out of hospitals, homes and care homes every day. The potential for infection and spread is high.

I have some cheap dust masks I bought when this all started. Seems selfish for me to keep them.

Do I just drop them my local a and e? Will they I use anything more 3?

Should have said now. Not more 3 🤔

Community pharmacist here, no PPE, no specific guidqnce and no way of monitoring who is coming through the door. But it's business as usual. My biggest worry is being asymptomatic and passing the virus onto so many vulnerable people. I very rarely get ill, never have a fever with any illness and have had 3 periods of being off sick in 12 years. But my husband often comes down with the same viruses as I see in colleagues at work and calls me his little germ transporter. No option to work from home either, and no answers to the questions patients have about prescription delivery services (we don't offer them, don't have the staff to offer them safely and without additional funding, don't have the money to offer them after all the cuts to community pharmacy over the last decade)

Just heard from a colleague at a neighbouring trust that they are being told the 14 day isolation for family symptoms doesn’t apply to them and they are to go in....

At our trust they have raised the high temp threshold from 37.8 to 38.

Any asthmatic HCPs with no clue whether they should be working? My work don’t seem to know. Advice changing by the hour!

Helenj it’s a nice thought but we have to have specific masks that we are fitted for so those won’t be of use.

Just heard from a colleague at a neighbouring trust that they are being told the 14 day isolation for family symptoms doesn’t apply to them and they are to go in....
^
How is that enforceable?

Ahhhh, nothing like being meat for the grinder.

Back in the day we used to joke about arrogant staff who didn't bother to glove up being sterile...

Seemingly some seem to think frontline staff are immune to CV19