My husband has said I can quit my job if I want to.

[QueenofmyPrinces]

I’m a nurse, obviously anxious about what dangers and nightmares lie ahead, and my DH has just said that I don’t have to go to work if I don’t want to, and he’d rather us live on just one wage if it meant I could be kept safe.

Has anyone else working in hospitals ever felt so nervous about what’s to come that they’d consider leaving?

You might be posting telling the OP to leave but come tomorrow, you might die because she did

Yeah, maybe. And maybe she'll die if she doesn't. And maybe neither will happen.

@QueenofmyPrinces I’m not using it as a reason for me to leave the NHS as moving to those areas wont apply to me anyway, but for some of my colleagues it will, and I feel worried for them.

So how does you abandoning them help? Or make you less worried?

And for those saying nurses didn’t sign up for this - okay, maybe not for a pandemic but we kinda did sign up to put ourselves in the path of diseases. I moved from Scotland to London in the early 80s to work in one of the first hospices to take people dying from AIDS. Friends and family told me I was crazy, putting my own life at risk etc. But I was ashamed and disgusted at the way people with AIDS were being treated and with those from my own profession refusing to care for them. To me, the Covid-19 situation is similar but on a much bigger scale.

@Iwalkinmyclothing - hopefully no, they won’t.

Just had my email to say I have been re-instated on the RN register due to emergency legislation passed. Feeling a bit scared but willing to help out where needed as long as my current employers will let me take unpaid leave for a few months.

I have no critical care of HDU experience but mainly Oncology and palliative care so will just go where needed.

ONCE again. It's the lack of PPE that's the issue.

It's knowing that you're not properly protected.

Well done, Florence Nightingale, for rushing to the bedsides of AIDS patients, but this is different. It's a pandemic of an extremely easily transmitted virus. One where how ill you get appears related to your degree of exposure, which will be huge for frontline nursing staff. Especially in inadequate PPE.

I have no critical care of HDU experience but mainly Oncology and palliative care so will just go where needed.

I’m sure your skills in palliative care will be a blessing and make a big difference to a lot of scared patients. Fingers crossed your current employer will let you have the leave you need.

No one is forcing you to work.. if you don't want to be there you can choose to quit and find a new career. I don't think you would get a reference from your employer though.

Guidance is if you are worried about coming into work to see if they can offer anything flexible or virtual.
If not I guess your job would end.

@Babyroobs - good on you. Take care

Not sure of the point you are trying to make?? Maybe that I’m hard hearted or cruel or something??

Doggybiccys. Yes, precisely this. I think your responses have been incredibly nasty.

1300 cakes no thankfully we don't have any shame? We also aren't frontline when you read the news.

I still stand by what I said too.
If the mental pressure is too much, walk away.
Being a nurse/ahp is nothing like being a soldier and we shouldn't have to put patients before our own families

That is ridiculous.

My trust are currently dishing out expired surgical masks to us.
We are lambs to slaughter.
As I said earlier, if I had the chance to walk away I absolutely would.

In fact when this all calms down and there is a decent job market. I'm off.

It is terrifying me how many nurses I know who work in my local Hospital are so, so scared. Theatre turning into icu to treat more patients. Makes me doubt the official line that there are two cases...

I'm an ex-nurse, 10 years lapsed so not being called up (I did apply to RTN last year now my children are older-primary aged, but there's no course in my county. I'm too lapsed for the call up, though I do have a critical care background, we'll see how it goes and I might volunteer if it gets to that). My DH is ex-military and please don't compare the 2. No he didn't sign up to put his life on the line; he signed up to go out and do a job EQUIPPED to do it. Remember the fuss over the protective armour being taken off some soldiers out in Iraq and given to others?

But no let's send a larger army of nurses with a flimsy paper mask and a pair of goggles to fight the good fight.

Fuck that. If you need to stop - stop. Nursing is a job folks, not a contract signed in the blood of fucking seraphim. If you can't take any more you DO NOT HAVE TO. And yes I know it could leave my loved ones without a nurse but that's not the OP's responsibility.

Though first- you could go off sick and take a break if you're exhausted/stressed, and see how you feel after a break. But quitting is fine too.

There is nothing comparable in our life time to this. I am a senior frontline nurse without the WHO recommend PPE, will I quit not just yet but, if I feel myself or family are comprised I would quit in a second.

Would I blame the nurses if my relative died ifthey left? NO I would blame this sham of a government and who have continuously underfunded the NHS for a decade and have taken the nurse for vocational carer's.

doggybiccys I am quite tough but find your attitude quite horrible, let's support our colleagues not bully them into working.

It's not an oath signed in blood, you can leave without feeling bad. The NMC quite clearly says you need to be in good health as part of the code, if you are psychologically affected by your job you need to address it. Nowhere does it say we need to sacrifice our lives to do so, I assume you do not have children.

Thank you to those who understand

I was reading earlier about one big city hospital that has closed its A&E department except for 0-15 year olds. The article said the only adult cases the A&E department will see are those presenting with life threatening conditions - everything else will be turned away and directed to other services.

I’m guessing it’s because they plan on turning the A&E department into one big ITU for Covid patients.

I feel so utterly overwhelmed, so frightened and absolutely powerless to do anything.

A previous poster used the term “lambs to the slaughter” and that’s exactly what we are.

Nobody cares about our safety, our health or our life - we just have to shut up and get on with it.

I’ve got a constant headache from the anxiety I’m feeling and I haven’t slept properly for days. I’m due in work in 2 days and I just can’t face it. I will go because I have to but I’m absolutely dreading it.

Get signed off with stress as a nurse manager that is what I would and have told my staff to do. You have a duty of care to your patient's and I don't believe you can with the best intentions fill it.

I'm a bit scared today too. It's expected that once our sick hospital patients with covid get to the point of cardiac arrest there appears to be virtually no point in resuscitating them. And the vast majority of patients who are put on a ventilator ( most wont be) won't survive either.

So those of you being nasty to and doing down the OP - get your nhs volunteer forms filled in to do deep cleaning on itu then you can put your money where your mouth is.

@QueenofmyPrinces I felt like resigning todsy too and I’m not in the acute. Community services are all being pushed to visit vulnerable people at home without ppe and not work from home to do their admin. I have asthma. Some colleagues are facing disciplinary action for wanting to visit clients and then write up records at home.
We’re being treated so badly by management and I’ve had enough.
So I feel for you and understand how you are feeling. If I didn’t have a mortgage and live alone I would be tempted myself.
This is going to be such a hard few months.

I’ve been reading today about how Birmingham Airport is being used as a temporary mortuary as there is no room to store anymore bodies in the actual hospital mortuaries.

I’ve been reading about the two ENT, healthy Consultants who are on Ventilators in ITU after contracting Covid at work.

And a healthy nurse, mother of three young children, who is also on a ventilator in ITU after contracting Covid at work.

A death rate in Spain of over 900 deaths in 24 hours with England heading in the same direction.

I don’t care if it does make me a bad nurse, but I’m petrified and want to run as far away from the frontline as possible.

Then hand in your notice

I've got 4 friends, ex nurses and Dr's who have volunteered. There are thousands stepping up, The numbers are rising. If it was causing me such angst I wouldn't need my DH approval. I'd just leave.

I haven’t RTFT, but I have been asked to join the temporary register as I gave up nursing a couple of years ago. I feel so so guilty, but I won’t. I realise this puts me in a much much better position than you. But my reasons for not doing so are, I imagine, the same as for you wanting to leave. I never found management supportive, we were never provided with the right equipment, always stressed to the hilt, and I have children at home! No way would I be guilt-tripped into putting my job before them! Nurses are absolutely amazing, but they’re still human, and I can only imagine how terrified you all are at the moment.
Do what is right for you and your family. Everyone is praising the NHS and it’s staff right now, but has anyone (in power) ever really appreciated them before. I know I certainly felt undervalued. The NMC never even asked my reasons for leaving, such is the value that is placed on one nurse.

Hi OP I don't blame you for being scared my mum is a RMN and I was just saying on another thread I am worried about her. She is 69 and not in perfect health. Firstly I worry because there are rumours of people being redeployed from completely unrelated dept and so it is conceivable that could happen even to MH nurses if things are really bad, and then secondly because even a non corona ward in a hospital has a lot of people in it when in an ideal world she would be staying at home. It certainly is a hard decision and I wish you all the luck in the world if you go ahead and work.