Does anyone find sobbing nurses etc in The News every night, in any way helpful?

[Miljea]

.... or does this footage rapidly lose its impact?

I sort of feel 'Yes, we know, and if the first months of footage failed to shock and awe, this won't!'. If anything, all it does is to numb people.

Ditto the non-contextualised rolling statistics.

Do you think it's an actual strategy, to bombard us with this? If it is, I fear it's not working.

FTR I'm coalface, Covid facing, full PPE NHS, tho not ICU.

But I have got up and personal with Covid that is killing people. Including in ICU.

But I don't think the News' blanket slightly blurry footage of HCPs all kitted up going about their business, interspersed with interviews with sobbing nurses- really helps. I have even heard the 'for God's sake, it's their job' remarks (at the hairdressers, when they were briefly open, TV on).

That person was argued with by her mate, but I do wonder whether too much of this sort of coverage makes people weary of it.

I'm not sure it's supposed to be helpful.

It's supposed to be getting the public to see how totally overwhelmed the NHS is now. Twice as many Covid patients as April. Thousands of NHS staff now have signifucant mental health problems including ptsd and suicidal thoughts. Some don't manage to get the adrenalin out of their system before their next shift starts. Many aren't sleeping properly. One medic today described some colleagues as having shell shock. Many doctors and nurses will burn out and leave the profession over the next 12 months.

Don't like watching it? Switch off then.

But this is the reality for much of our supposed much-loved NHS, and they deserve to have their nightmare known about.

Its designed to scare people.

It's a firsthand account of people at the hub of a national crisis. Is every firsthand account 'designed' to scare people? It has always been considered 'the news' up to this point. Or is it the nurses you think are trying to scare people? Because I would talk about desperation rather than manipulation in relation to them. Or the ICU consultants saying 'It could be you'? Are they trying to scare you or tell you something newsworthy that is objectively rather alarming?

Or do you just want everyone to shut up so we can forget about what is happening in there, the better to ease lockdown and let them run out of oxygen without a scaremongering platform?

@shindiggery

Whether it's 'helpful' to you, it's really important to know that this is the state of the health service we're accustomed to relying on. A large proportion of our daily lives are changed by this tiny slice of reality - those sobbing nurses are among a very small number of people with first-hand experience of what it looks like. If we don't take those packed and failing wards into account, even more people will end up there and I happen to believe that is really, really newsworthy. We would also hear first-hand accounts in any national crisis and there would be something terribly odd and sinister if these voices were not given a platform, unhelpful side-effects notwithstanding. It's newsworthy.

But night after night after night? Still 'really, really newsworthy'?

We KNOW. If tonight's report, from inside the ICU of St Wherever's swayed you when 9 months of it didn't, you're probably .000000009% of the population.

We know what the inside of an ICU looks like during Covid. Another sobbing nurse doesn't really have much impact (sorry!)- in fact, in could be considered counterproductive. Compassion fatigue.

And we also know that people don't care about the state of the health service because they vote Brexit and Tory.

These are knowns.

And 'voices given a platform' is also known as 'vox-pop'; which has blighted 'News' for well over a decade now.

The 'News' is not necessarily the place to platform sobbing nurses and bereaved relatives.

DPs being saying this since Christmas. I called him a heartless bastard but I'm starting to feel it too.

As an aside, I'm convinced that the crying nurse and imploring consultant featured last night are shagging.

@shindiggery

I actually find your posts quite distasteful, OP.

You don't sound that far removed from the people you're pretending to be worried will become deadened to the horror of this.

Hey, you haven't called me 'vile' yet, or 'unfit to be a HCP', so I guess that's a plus...

I am not 'deadened'; but I do feel HCPs, like the ICU nurses, are being filmed crying-to-camera for less than edifying reasons.

I'm not 'pretending' to worry about compassion fatigue, I'm witnessing it. Partly due to the endless news-feeds of 'Inside ICU'. People can only 'care' so much.

You may need to read what I've written more carefully.

Dont worry the paper were soon go back to nurses being too focused on education and too posh to wash. And the public will return to their we pay your taxes with their new addition of we clapped for you.
Ppl who have never worked in healthcare don't have a clue.

I live in NZ luckily.

My mother every night without fail will whats app me with the latest numbers ( i read them everyday online but she still wants me to know). its accompanied by all the woe, misery, v worrying, v upsetting.

I know it is but it's not helping her mental health so I have told her to stop watching it.

She is complying with all the rules so these reports don't make her change habits and I can't help but think that those who are flouting the rules won't be tuning into the news.

We all have an obligation to bear witness to what is happening. Some of those who are bereaved or traumatised need to have their stories heard - whether people are tired of it or not.

I want to know why their union aren't all over this. If I know my incoming patient is Covid +, I at least put on a FFP3 mask, 'aerosol producing' or not

That isn’t standard PPE for Covid positive patients, and I’m amazed that you are seeing so few positive patients that you are able to waste PPE like that.

Our entire ward, and several of our dialysis shifts, are fully covid positive, and we have four FFP3s on the resus trolley and that’s it.

It isn’t a Union issue because that is NHSE advice. You can agree or disagree with it, but you aren’t going to get your union interested.

@shindiggery

Its designed to scare people.

It's a firsthand account of people at the hub of a national crisis. Is every firsthand account 'designed' to scare people? It has always been considered 'the news' up to this point. Or is it the nurses you think are trying to scare people? Because I would talk about desperation rather than manipulation in relation to them. Or the ICU consultants saying 'It could be you'? Are they trying to scare you or tell you something newsworthy that is objectively rather alarming?

Or do you just want everyone to shut up so we can forget about what is happening in there, the better to ease lockdown and let them run out of oxygen without a scaremongering platform?

The Government is trying to scare people into following lockdown rules, and supporting lockdown.

There clearly is a generalised agenda to scare people.

I would have thought that was it was fairly obvious that our current news programming goes well beyond the neutral, unbiased and factual reporting of a variety of news stories.

Strangely though, the few news items demonstrating The Situation Abroad are in much the same vein. The only good news is New Zealand, which is held up as the shining example of the perfect lockdown.

The message is - follow the lockdown rules.

@colouringindoors

I'm not sure it's supposed to be helpful.

It's supposed to be getting the public to see how totally overwhelmed the NHS is now. Twice as many Covid patients as April. Thousands of NHS staff now have signifucant mental health problems including ptsd and suicidal thoughts. Some don't manage to get the adrenalin out of their system before their next shift starts. Many aren't sleeping properly. One medic today described some colleagues as having shell shock. Many doctors and nurses will burn out and leave the profession over the next 12 months.

Don't like watching it? Switch off then.

But this is the reality for much of our supposed much-loved NHS, and they deserve to have their nightmare known about.

Can I go off piste here a bit?

Can I suggest that, in fact, your scenario won't play out? That, for an off-the-top-of-my-head analogy, in the same way as we go back to the dentist, knowing it'll hurt (we don't as humans, accurately recall pain)- actually, the very mindset that draws people into becoming HCPs will be the same skillset that will carry them through this.

Upthread, someone was affronted at the 'dark humour' aimed at the reaction a mortuary tech who sobbed-to-camera about the endless bodies coming through..... well, I smiled (just a tiny bit), too.

You'd be surprised at the resilience of many, many HCPs. A resilience we see less and less in Public Life. Most actually do manage to 'get the adrenaline out of their system' before the next shift starts. There is solace in dark humour. Not sleeping properly? Blame back to back 13 hour night shifts for that, not Covid.

Yes, sadly there will be casualties among our colleagues. You'll hate my very being for saying this, but in my department, some of us accurately predicted back in May who among us might buckle or take advantage...seven 14 day periods of isolation? Really? Scarily accurate.

Sympathy all around for those whom Covid did for. But that will prove to be a surprisingly small number. Any others will recall this as being their biggest annual pay cheque ever; and we note the massive surge of applications into HCP degree courses.

And, FTR, our NHS isn't 'much loved', it's deified (the scapegoated) and set in aspic. Which is why people hollowed out vast tracts of it by voting Brexit and Tory. So please don't spin that one. And 'much loved' also allows people to deify nursing and medicine and the other HCPs so you can shriek 'Vocation!' when these people next ask for a decent wage. Just you watch this space on that one.

It’s much easier to justify your own selfish ways and thoughts if you ignore the horrible effect they have on other people.

@Chimeraforce

Agree. Sick of it. I'm sure HCPs are too. I don't know how they're doing it.

I know bodies are in the chiller in hospital. They always are. Covid or not. It's horrid but death is part of life.

I'm following the rules. My kids had no education for 5 months last year now again this year. I wear a mask, avoid family and friends.
I can do no more. This corpse waterboarding makes me wonder why I'm being bombarded. Aim at rule breakers ffs.

Yes, this.

I feel so sorry for the staff, it must be awful. But - I can’t actually do anything else to change things for them. I’ve not been over my door for days.

@boysonthesofa

Sorry but it is necessary - the urgency needs to be communicated to some stupid people in this country such as the ones shouting outside a hospital in central London that the whole thing is a hoax. Unfortunately a lot of these desperate pieces are for the people who just don't fucking get it.

I agree with this - it has to be seen by all who aren't taking the virus seriously. I found tonight's footage traumatic to watch, the staff must be really worn out, it's been a year now.

@Changechangychange

I want to know why their union aren't all over this. If I know my incoming patient is Covid +, I at least put on a FFP3 mask, 'aerosol producing' or not

That isn’t standard PPE for Covid positive patients, and I’m amazed that you are seeing so few positive patients that you are able to waste PPE like that.

Our entire ward, and several of our dialysis shifts, are fully covid positive, and we have four FFP3s on the resus trolley and that’s it.

It isn’t a Union issue because that is NHSE advice. You can agree or disagree with it, but you aren’t going to get your union interested.

An interesting fact:

Back in March/April, we weren't allowed to wear any PPE at all when coming up and personal with The Public because it might 'scare them'. That was 'standard'. Because they didn't have enough PPE. Not because that was safe.

Wearing a mask in the hospital corridor got you told off.

FFWD- to now; not wearing a mask gets you told off.

Same 'ole Covid!

I can assure you that my union is very, very interested (I'm a rep) and has lobbied and fully supports any one of us who wants to wear a FFP3 mask dealing with any patient. And it'd be a brave Trust that balked.

I loved your use of the word 'waste' (). It would be a far bigger 'waste' if the entire department went off on isolation like Maternity has to in my hospital, right now! Those masks aren't scarce anymore. Who has told you that?

With respect, I think you're mad agreeing to work in close confines with known Covid patients without FFP3 masks.

Anyway, we digress.

@BungleandGeorge

It’s much easier to justify your own selfish ways and thoughts if you ignore the horrible effect they have on other people.

Was that aimed at me?

Whatever- but do you genuinely think the nightly bombardment of 'Inside ICU and Sobbing Nurse' has made the slightest dent in anyone's 'selfish ways and thoughts'?

I think film of sobbing nurses (and doctors), exhausted and fragile, would be better used when their pay is being considered, or yet another change to how the NHS works to the detriment of its professional staff is debated. Keep it all under wraps until then.. Then pull it out and play it all ....

I'm not fed up with it though.

I am fed up with all the films of this or that grief stricken family who have just been bereaved. My personal count of the dead due to COVID is well into double figures. I know what it's like and I have no idea whether their are many people who don't now. I don't think it's 'News'. We could have 'The COVID Hour' or something for that or 2 minutes before the News.

I am entirely certain the 'nurses are lazy buggers who chat at the desk all day' narrative will return with a vengeance once they ask for a pay rise.

No need to worry, normal service will resume eventually.

If Oprah Winfrey and her ilk taught us anything, it's that if you want to make someone cry on camera you simply ask them, "How are you feeling?" or "Are you okay?". It's the oldest hack-journalist trick in the book and it works every time. It worked on Megan and it works on doctors and nurses.

I'm not 'pretending' to worry about compassion fatigue, I'm witnessing it

Why don't you just be honest. You're feeling it.

Nice gas lighting but no, I'm not the kind of person who would call you vile for what you've said. Your comments are distasteful in their tone, to me. I didn't call you vile so don't act the martyr.

Fascinating to see this thread. So, would people prefer to see daisies in the news? Never mind we are in the middle of the pandemic, we don't want to know what's happening. It's enough you told us once. Now show us fields of daisies instead

Your comments that first hand accounts have no place in the news are inane though, I will say that. I don't find the fancy name you've given it very impressive.

As for reporting repeatedly on the same unfolding tragedy, I find that view point as mystifying as if you'd queried why there are still a plethora of articles being written about Gren. and why those first hand accounts from relatives who lost loved ones are still finding their way into the papers. Both are clearly are in national interest, of public interest and have recurring themes. The last in no way detracts from the first two.

What I find strange is, you're saying you're worried that other people might stop caring about the nurses etc but if you personally were to do your little bit to make that happen, this would be the perfect way to go about it.

@Miljea
No not really aimed at you just offering an explanation why some people would rather ignore it, call it self preservation if you like. It’s very normal and I believe we all do it. Pretty much everyone is suffering and people start looking out for themselves, unfortunately some people do it to the extent that they don’t give a damn about anyone else and don’t want to make any adjustments to their own lifestyle whatsoever, to justify that they ignore the reality. It’s easy to care about other people when you’re happy, enjoying life, got no worries.
In answer to your question I can do a survey of one and say actually I did watch this evening and found it very genuine and I really felt for the people involved. They weren’t dissolving over the patients, they were a few tears away in the corner of the room and yes it was obviously edited to remove the rest of the day when they were fine and weren’t telling someone that their loved one was going to die. personally I’ve always felt that the thing that drives HCP to do their best is genuinely caring about their patients. The ones who don’t care at all are in the wrong job.

@Guineapigbridge

If Oprah Winfrey and her ilk taught us anything, it's that if you want to make someone cry on camera you simply ask them, "How are you feeling?" or "Are you okay?". It's the oldest hack-journalist trick in the book and it works every time. It worked on Megan and it works on doctors and nurses.

Absolutely! Works on me too!