What sort of mental health support will there be for NHS staff?

[Bookriddle]

I'm writing this not long after dropping my wife off at work, where her ward will be short staffed again, 2 nurses for 30 patients, 80% of them have covid and have been told none of them will get a ICU bed if and when they get worse!

I spent the last 2 hours holding my wife while she cried and cried, she cant deal with it anymore, she accepts that death is part of her job, but not on this scale, in the last 2 nights, she has personally had 5 patients die on her, she expects 1 or 2 tonight if they didnt die during the day, she says there is nothing they can do but hold there hands and comfort them as much as possible!

She is not sleeping at night, all she can hear when she close her eyes is a patient gasbing for air! Pretty much all the staff on her ward feel the same, alot of them have said they will leave nursing once this is over!

So my question is, what sort of mental health support will the goverment give NHS staff when this is over, going by the military they will do fuck all and will have NHS staff suffering with PTSD

I asked this question of a nurse on MN a day or two ago,
She said there is no support. And furthermore, MH services in general are overwhelmed.

Thank you from a member of the general public, for what she is doing, and the support you are giving her, while she does it.

I think it is something the government should prioritise too.

OP, I'm so sorry to hear this. I work for the NHS, but not frontline. I can't begin to imagine how hard this must be for staff.

There should definitely be support in place. At my trust we have a support line staff can phone and speak to a qualified mental health practitioner. They're just there to listen if that's what's needed, or they can signpost to other mental health services. We also have support hubs, which are like groups therapy for teams who have experienced trauma, facilitated by a psychologist. My understanding is this offer should be the same for all NHS trusts.

I know that many frontline staff never really look at the intranet or the information that gets sent out as they just don't get the time. Ask your wife if she can access the trust intranet (or if you can on her behalf) as all the information about the support should be on there. Otherwise, her manager should be able to give her the details (although I know some managers are better than others at this sort of thing).

Alternatively, she could phone the NHS staff support line and speak to one of the trained advisors, here's a link to the details - people.nhs.uk/help/

You sound incredibly supportive, which is so important. I hope she manages to access the support she needs.

They won't give any or if they do it will be minimal. NHS staff are expected to slog through all this and at the end just go back to their normal jobs.

I was redeployed in the first wave and on the covid wards, chucked in at the deep end. After weeks of watching patients die and then being expected to go back into another 13 hour shift, I rang occupational health. Their advice was to download a free mindfulness app and try lavender oil as I wasn't sleeping.

I really feel for your wife, she is lucky to have a understanding/supportive partner Hopefully individual trusts will come up with some sort of support for staff.

There is (should be...) support available through her trust. I know mine has information on the screensaver on all the computers.

I've also heard good things about Frontline19. Details at www.frontline19.com/

Also NHS practitioner health has resources www.practitionerhealth.nhs.uk/covid-19-workforce-wellbeing

I know these are stickingplasters on a gaping wound, but hopefully may be of some help.

I'm sorry your wife is suffering.

Posters and maybe 2 or 3 sessions with a counselor if you are very very lucky. There is no debriefing. No lessons learned from mistakes.

Staff are blamed for everything and anything. Short staffed, no breaks, Burn out? The higher ups don't care as long as the paperwork is completed.

There is going to be an absolute avalanche of nhs clinical staff who leave after this which in turn will mean the students get worse placements due to staffing levels or mentors being forced to take more students, nurses being forced to be mentors who shouldn't be mentors and thus the wheel turns.

Short staffing levels= accidents=blame culture=low morale=staff leaving=short staffing etc

I’m really lucky that we are getting excellent support.

We have a great team and great management. They are making time for us and are really understanding of staff needs as well as the needs of the patients and the ward.

We have pop ins we can attend and a telephone help line (although personally haven’t had time and don’t know what I would say). Supervision has been increased and prioritised.

I noticed that the Samaritans set up a service for nhs staff although I don’t know much about it.

Thank you everyone, some great information on here, will sit my wife down tomorrow evening and go through the links!

I'd guess fuck all. NHS managers don't give a shit as long as the place is staffed. They will pay lip service about the wonderful staff but do fuck all about it

It’s so very hard at the minute because we are still in eye of the eye of the storm. And I actually don’t find talking helpful at the minute.
Would she consider registering here? We try and offer a little support in ‘real time’ although there is so much anti NHS sentiment it makes it hard.

My husband has been my absolute rock. It’s tough as he works full time as well in an environmentally risky job but he has just swept in with regards some of the practical stuff I struggle with.
The exhaustion is like nothing I’ve ever EVER known in my life. It’s literally work, sleep repeat. Tell her she’s not alone.
And as for support in the future? I’m not sure. I think so many of us are simply trying to keep going until we see some light soon.

@Pandoraslastchance

Posters and maybe 2 or 3 sessions with a counselor if you are very very lucky. There is no debriefing. No lessons learned from mistakes.

Staff are blamed for everything and anything. Short staffed, no breaks, Burn out? The higher ups don't care as long as the paperwork is completed.

There is going to be an absolute avalanche of nhs clinical staff who leave after this which in turn will mean the students get worse placements due to staffing levels or mentors being forced to take more students, nurses being forced to be mentors who shouldn't be mentors and thus the wheel turns.

Short staffing levels= accidents=blame culture=low morale=staff leaving=short staffing etc

Yep get punched by a patient?.. what do you think you should have done to avoid getting punched?.. screamed at by a family member same!

Im not sure there will be a mass exodus of nursing staff. We also have consequences of Brexit, consequences of so much money being wasted by self serving tories spent. Where would all these nurses saying they are going to leave nursing, go to? Nursing is a secure job. We wont be heading into secure times. If I was a nurse I wouldnt be leaving nursing, id be leaving the uk.

@SeahorseoramI

Im not sure there will be a mass exodus of nursing staff. We also have consequences of Brexit, consequences of so much money being wasted by self serving tories spent. Where would all these nurses saying they are going to leave nursing, go to? Nursing is a secure job. We wont be heading into secure times. If I was a nurse I wouldnt be leaving nursing, id be leaving the uk.

What is it you do for a living?

Sorry she's having such a tough time.
The support available depends on the individual trust rather than being NHS wide.
It's pretty good at my trust. I think some staff will still have lasting effects even with good support. It's not like anything we have faced before.

There is going to be an absolute avalanche of nhs clinical staff who leave after this which in turn will mean the students get worse placements due to staffing levels or mentors being forced to take more students, nurses being forced to be mentors who shouldn't be mentors and thus the wheel turns.

I must say I'm finding the work load with students more stressful than the covid stuff right now. We normally have 2 students at any given time. We currently have 4 and half our nurses are either ron long term sick or off with covid.

First year students have had no face to face classroom learning so all yhe basics they learn prior to placement (medication drawing up injections, physical obs, you know, the nursing basics) havent been taught so we're having to put on full on teaching sessions before they can even do anything with patients. I'm so angry that the universities didn't give us the heads up that this is the case, we just don't have the time for it.
The students will be buggered if it carries on much longer.

I don't know but I've mentioned this a lot the past year.

I'm hearing more and more stories of staff having ptsd.

They keep comparing this to war and so they should be throwing support at recovery as if that's what they've been in.

I don't think any of us can really appreciate what nhs staff on the frontline have faced.

We have been offered access to MH services but I haven't availed of it so I don't know what it involves. OP, my heart breaks for your wife. Meanwhile elsewhere on MN, we have people quibbling about NHS staff getting discounts, the vaccine etc. Some frontline staff have literally been on the battlefield and PTSD is inevitable for many of them.

I am very lucky that as a midwife, I am mainly dealing with life rather than death, but my heart breaks for the staff dealing with death every single shift, and being the only person supporting the dying patient

This article made me bawl my eyes out earlier

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-55735549

I dread to think. Not much I suspect.
There are front line NHS staff in my gym buddy group and they're struggling.

Not every trust is as bad as some people above have experienced and a lot of places are working on emotional/psychological support. If there’s nothing barn door obvious on the trust intranet/ occ health pages then the chaplaincy service might be a good place to start? You don’t necessarily need to have a religious background to get support from them (not where I work anyway) and they’re often aware of other services the trust can offer to support staff that are struggling.

I know some areas are setting up resilience hubs similar to what was set up following the Manchester arena attack. www.penninecare.nhs.uk/mcrhub-covid19

The Royal College of nursing has a hardship fund and will be using it to provide support and therapy for those left traumatised by covid.

There isn't even MH support for people who lockdown has pushed into being suicidal, so my guess is nothing.

I'm not sure how supportive her trust is, doesn't seem very good go be honest!

Her manager is a waste of time, she is terrible, she still hasnt bothered to authorise her news years eve shift, almost a month forward, she does all of her extras in ICU and the manager there authorises her shifts before she has even finished!

Her only potential saving grace is, she has applied for a job in ICU fulltime, she actually enjoys it in there, because she feels like they are trying to save lives, on the wards its different

So sorry to read this.
I hope her night is not as bad as your DW fears.

Our trust have put a few things in place and there are constant reminders of how to access that help. I'm not sure that any of those services is qualified or has experience to treat the avalanche of PTSD that is coming their way though.

It's like everyone knows it is going to happen and what's coming but there's not a lot of talk about how it's going to be managed and treated.