Is anyone else hating their NHS life?

[hayfeverhellish]

NHS during covid was awful, obviously. But I think we were running on adrenaline but the ‘recovery phase’ is something else.

I’m in therapies so we are never thought about - it’s all cancer screening, operations and bed days that matter. But we are the people that get patients back on their feet, eating, talking and looking after themselves.

Currently, half of us have been forced to work at home with ‘virtual appointments’ (which doesn’t work for a lot of the patients and the tech is crap) and basically forgotten about in the new struggle for rooms / staff / PPE to restart services.

Everyone is tired, arguing over rooms and services, loads of people on long term sick with stress, unpaid leave due to lack of space in schools, and now we have to wear masks ALL. THE. TIME.

I could cry at the thought of Monday. The job I loved seems to have left the building and the patients are suffering

Just me?

Yup. I'm largely podiatry and I'm sick of telephone appointments. How is it going to help someone with 6 inch long nails digging into their skin and so much callus they can't walk any more and there is no end in sight. We're still seeing diabetic ulcer patients but we're seeing those who normally see the hospital specialists who are extraordinarily acute and we're really struggling as we're not used to treating this level of acute patient. It's exhausting and terrifying.

Work in a mental health team, mostly at home. Hating it. Wearing a mask all the time feels like the last straw!

As an NHS audiologist working woth the deaf and hearing impaired I am just dreading the masks, really concerned with how our patients will manage with staff covering their faces both in our clinic and in any other services the require.

Work in mental health

Last few months has taken its toll I’m exhausted I’m teary much of the time and weekends I feel like I don’t want to do anything

The constant changes do not help either whenever there is a change in restrictions it causes anxiety

As for the masks 🙄 ridiculous we haven’t been wearing them most of the time in the height of the pandemic and now we have to wear them all the time

I feel for you guys, it sounds crap. Education is the same. We're all hating how our jobs have changed.

I honestly feel like my head will explode some days. Days off being no relief, I’ve spent the weekend trying to relax while running through my head how many staff will now need mask x how many a day x how many days a week.........

This!

I work 5 days full time (band 7) and need the weekends to rest. All I've done this weekend is run through different scenarios of staff, rooms, services, risk assessments, difficult conversations in my head and they all end up with me blowing my top and walking out.....

I just know the mask rule will result in people being squashed into unsuitable office/bases with a mask on at all times just to do the restarting services jenga. We have no staff room obviously, we have to eat lunch at our desks and have nowhere else to go if they tell us to eat in shifts with masks off.

I'm so tired of it all. LOVED my specialism and role but now, none of it matters. How some random person in management who knows nothing about my service can decide whether it's important enough to restart and where / how I'll be allowed to do it is beyond me. I really hope the patients complain loudly.

I'm not a go off sick person either but I'm seriously considering it. I don't know what else to do until I figure out a plan B.

@hayfeverhellish I've been trying to think of a plan B for years!!

Yes, hate it. Working with elderly inpatients with dementia who can't hear me and find it terrifying to be surrounded by people in masks. Knackered from constant rota changes, ive worked all but 3 weekends since mid march and every bank holiday. All out annual leave was cancelled but now being told we have to take it again but have only been able to take 1 day off at a time mid week, which doesn't do much for relaxing, due to everyone else needing to take time off. Also, still having to do my box ticking training portfolio to porgress so spending those single days off doing that. I haven't had a true "day off" not involving work since February.

One thing this has all really highlighted to me, that I knew before really, was how badly the NHS treats it's staff. We are regularly chastised from managers, who we have never met before, who appear tell us that we are not socially distancing when it is impossible to due to lack of workspace and computers and then disappear. No praise for the fact we have all redeployed, cancelled annual leave etc on no notice.

You'd really think they'd recognise their staff go above and beyond and foster a good environment for their staff... No wonder there is so much LT sick.

I've had enough too! I miss FTF consultations so much & the thought of wearing a mask all day - even to do a 5 hrs remote telephone clinic. I seriously feel like handing my notice in and taking some time out.

yes, absolutely bloody hate ir. Im a clinician working in mental health. We are seeing a massive increase in workload, all therapy groups pausd indefintiely, stupid bloody microsoft teams meetings casue we cant all be in a room together. And dont even get me started on telephone and video patient appointments. I am seeing some people face to face now thank god but not enough. We are a new team that was reconfigured in Feb and were still getting to know each other when this all kicked off so that hasnt helped. And as for everyone now wearing masks at all time - aboslutely the final straw. Absolutely no science to back it up given we have all been working without masks for months (masks for when seeing patients obvs) So now I have to spend all day in a mask, steaming my glassess up, sneezing into it a million times due to hayfever, whilst trying to make an accurate assessment of someones mental health over the bloody phone.
I absolutely loath my job now and I would walk out tomorrow if I could afford to

Yup.

Totally fed up. Everything changes all the time. Comms are really difficult so not all team members on a given day are up to speed with what is “correct” that day.

Other teams don’t seem to be very supportive with lots of bitchy incident forms being completed. And some of the patients are being very demanding.

Working in PPE feels like it will kill me. We do aerosol generating stuff so I’m Wearing a reusable FFP3 mask which HSE guidance suggests should be worn only for an hour at a time for up to 5hrs in a single stretch. It’s really crap and making me ill.

Add in the endless managerial pressure because the waiting lists are out of control as we have done very little work for 3 months and it is a perfect pressure cooker for burnout.

The thought of wearing a mask the whole time I’m in the building has destroyed any positivity I had left.

The sheer volume of masks we are going to be getting through is ridiculous. I wonder if supplies will hold up?

If someone had advertised our jobs as they look now, no one would apply for them. Recruitment has frozen anyway so if people leave, it just creates more crap, virtual meaningless work for everyone else.

Thanks for this thread OP. I'm not NHS so it's interesting for me to read. Really sorry you are all having such a tough time

Also where do we stand with drinking all day?

Masks + hospital heat + volume of talking required in most nhs jobs means we should be drinking way above normal volumes (massive risk of headaches, UTIs and long term voice problems otherwise) but we've also been told we can only take the mask off on our 1 lunch break.....

The differences between hospitals can be seen here. We’ve had to wear masks constantly since the start of this, however we weren’t allowed to wear them in Corridor or canteen. Now we have to wear them in Corridors and canteen. We
only get to take them off for a quick drink (if we’re lucky) between patients.

There should be equal standards for staff in all the hospitals, not such variables.

@opinionatedfreak it is a perfect pressure cooker for burnout
This.

@Poppiesway1 we've always had to wear them on wards and face to face with patients as well. But on wards there are staff rooms you can go into for a breather and have a drink. Staff rooms aren't covid secure anymore so not sure what that will mean for breaks. Outpatient areas and offices (where my base is) we didn't wear them (unless with patients - rarely currently) so that will be a big change to wear them in offices when doing phone appointments etc. It depends on how many people are going to have to be in spaces as to how covid secure or not they will be I guess.

@LesbianMummies exactly that. We also have no proof that the partners live together either. We’ve had patients lie to us to get what they want, they suddenly have bleeding; they get a scan with the partner present as the pregnancy is classed as “at risk”, they then accidentally say it wasn’t actually bleeding... We had a patient attend for a possible DVT scan, told dr’s different history to us. Told us they’d just come back from a long haul flight.. no quarantine, no mask, no regard for the danger they put all the staff and other patients in.
And yet we’re forced to see these people and their partners. We’ve all said we’d feel happier working in Tescos that when do frontline nhs.

@hayfeverhellish our ward staff rooms were taken away a long time ago, just one communal canteen for over 3k staff! we were made to remove masks when waking out of a clinic room and through a patient waiting area or ward corridor and masks back on in the offices. Now we can wear them all the time again. The only places now exempt from masks where I am is the finance, IT etc areas who are not accessed by the general public.

Let's just remind ourselves that the order to wear masks all the time in hospital has come from government, not hospital management.
Our high managers are constantly thanking and praising in the regular, frquent emails. Gets a bit meaningless. Balanced with being the only hospital in the area to send Project Wingman away as it is a risk to us, apparently.
I miss Wingman.
For those who may not know, it was a free '1st class departure lounge' serving snacks and drinks, manned by airline pilots and crew for hospital staff. Hospital charity provided the consumables. The airline staff had all been furloughed or made redundant and gave their time happily.
We didn't get time to go down often, but it was so nice to know it was there for us. And now it's not.
Sending love and appreciation to all the crew and very, very best wishes for the future. You held our lives in your hands in the air, and you helped us keep going through all this. That means so much.

@hayfeverhellish are you me?
All sounds familiar especially this bit......

I'm so tired of it all. LOVED my specialism and role but now, none of it matters. How some random person in management who knows nothing about my service can decide whether it's important enough to restart and where / how I'll be allowed to do it is beyond me. I really hope the patients complain loudly.

I’ve also considered taking sick leave, I’m keep having random runs of palpitations ( I hope and not an arrhythmia) that makes me feel like I’ll faint.....but I won’t, my team had been decimated by redeployment so I can’t

The mask rule is stupid. I worked a night shift last night and ended up talking to colleagues with the mask under my chin and just pull it up if the powers that be come on the ward. I always wear it properly with patients.

We just want everything back to normal. All our elective work is cancelled and emergency surgery has moved to another hospital. Outpatients is shut so their staff have been sent to help us but we are so quiet (gen paeds ward) that there is usually more staff than patients. We're fed up and bored and feel in limbo as there seems to be no plans to go back to normality.

Long term patients are sick of the menu, it's been the same 4 options for lunch and dinner every single day since march. I have no idea why they can't offer a normal menu.
The final straw last week was that the vending machine ran out of chocolate.

it's been the same 4 options for lunch and dinner every single day since march. I have no idea why they can't offer a normal menu

This has been baffling me too. I don't understand why covid-19 = only soup and packet sandwiches for lunch

I started a nursing degree years ago, but left after a year, something I've always regretted, until now. Many of my friends though are still working in the NHS, they have been absolutely broken by the past few months, and although some hated the job anyway; even the positive ones are different people to a few months ago, it's a travesty. One is coming to work with me as although we don't need qualified nurses, it certainly is a benefit. But make no mistake, the government's pushing of heroes etc is so that people see it as neccessary suffering, rather than their poor management and years of dismantling it. Speaking out is made harder for some as well because of the burden of such words, but you are all genuinely awesome.