Protect the NHS

Happy New Year to everyone.

2020 was hard year with the pandemic but it not over yet. It more important now more than ever to protect our NHS during wave 2. The government in the UK has been slow on the up take, always seeming to be one step behind or plain ignore the advice from SAGE. The NHS is overwhelmed!

Winter is always difficult. We busy and full with flu or other winter virus that can make our vulnerable and elderly population extremely sick. This year on top of these normal winter pressures we have covid. I would in ED in London as a nurse we stretched, we understaffed and overwhelmed by the amount of people.

Part of this is due to space. As per government guidance we are social distancing patients as best of possible in all areas as we won’t know who A-symptomatic with covid and who covid free and if possible would like to prevent people without covid getting it. What does this mean to the public? Your probably use to scene of patient lining the corridors of emergency departments up and down the country, double park and all, waiting rooms with more people than chairs. At present we are not allowed to do any of this, in waiting room patient need at least 2 chairs between them, no patient in corridor unless we are completely stuck. The other issue to do with space most emergency departments are dealing with is where to put our covid area and where to put the non-covid area and how to split this space. In the first wave when we went into lock especially most non-covid patient stopped come to ED so we could use our main department for covid and response ward space (normal just the one) for non-covid patients, this wave people are not staying away, meaning people that could wait for GPs or go to walk in are still attending emergency departments. People are still going out which can lead to accidents. I work in ED for 2 years now, this is the busiest I seen it, some of my colleagues who have been ED nurse for 4-10 years have also never seen the department like this.

We are seeing what covid does to all age range of patient. Someone said to me that it only elderly and vulnerable people who are getting really sick with covid, this is not true. Listen to me now I had lots of normally fit and well 30 to 50 year old who now need oxygen, it not just about protecting the elderly or vulnerable, anyone can get really sick and need ICU from it. We still don’t understand why this happens to some and not others.

A lot of my colleagues are breaking point, we anxious and stressed, worried about take covid home to family, stressed due to being understaffed and knowing that most of our shift at present will be awful for one reason or another. Mental health charities are reporting larger number of health care worker using hotline and helpline as they as overwhelmed with work. The NHS is at breaking point, we have no space left in the hospital and staff are burning out, if we not careful we will lose one of the best things about the UK and it won’t be because the Tories took it apart.

Now to you. How can the general public protect the NHS? Follow guidance from the government. STAY AT HOME! Simple! Don’t meet another household on a walk and if you do social distance. If you can work from home do.  Wear a mask. Wash your hands. Stay away from others. Do not break the rules because it a special occasion, (we expecting a spike in case from Christmas and new year over the next 2 weeks), we know you miss your families so do we. If we went by the rules and the government forced isolation when come to the country, we could be sitting pretty like New Zealand right about now but we not.

My only other piece of advice is to get vaccinated. You can not get the virus from any vaccination in the first place, the covid vaccinate the American one is not even the virus its protein instruction and the oxford one is a dead virus. It is safe! No, it’s not got a tracker in it, your not that interesting to be tracked also your phone works much better as a tracker than anything they could put in the vaccinate. Lastly if you want the world to return to any kind of previous normal, we need to control the virus and a vaccinate is the best way for that.

If we don’t do these simple things we won’t have an NHS left to help look after once the pandemic is behind us. Please protect your love one by following the rules. Please protect our beloved NHS by following the rules and only going to the hospital if it is an emerngcy.

Protect the NHS. Stay home. Wear a Mask. Wash your hands. Social distance. Get vaccinated! I will be.

I am on the right path, what next?

I have always been the girl with the plan. Since I was 6 I always knew what I wanted to do. It changed a few time as children do what I always wanted be something medical. When I was 6, I wanted to be a doctor, when I got to secondary school for a little while I wanted be a teacher, but then went back to be wanting to be a paramedic. When I got to 16 I wanted to be something cool, and to me my dad was the coolest so I wanted to be a sound and light engineer. But again I went back to wanting to be a paramedic or nurse. In the end I settled on nursing. I looked at university, and was dead set on it.

My a-levels were not great due to lack of support at school, but luck had it I got into university anyway. I completed my 3 years training with some good time, some very stressful times and some bad times, and came out with 2:1 in adult nursing.

Since I qualify I have had 3 different jobs in 2 years. I first worked on an acute admission unit, busy, stressful; it always felt more like I was pushing beds then caring for patients. It was always more important to move the patient to the ward and get your next one from A&E so that A&E did not get blocked and they could get the next person off the ambulance. Which of course is important but it never felt I was caring for patients the way I wanted to, so I moved on.

As a student I always wanted to work in the acute section, I did A&E as a placement and loved it but I always wanted to try to work on critical care. So off I went to critical care. The unit I work on was a big unit, 35 beds, 11 of them side rooms. The team I worked with was very supportive and helpful. It was a great working environment. The problem with CCU was your looking after the sickest of the sick, yes this can be very rewarding but it can always be very depressing. We got a lot of cancer patient on our unit and some people never recovered, you work so hard to try and get these people well again but despite all the hard of the team and yourself they still pass away. I found working there very hard for this reason. It was stressful and depressing. The people I worked with are brilliant and great at their job but that job was not for the one for me.

Now I moved on to working in the community, I now work as part of the district nurse time as a community staff nurse. I prefer this job, enjoying it more than I enjoy AAU and CCU; but with all of these jobs I had the feeling that I was not quite in it, maybe bored in some way. I am very passion about nursing, my work and helping others, but there must be other ways to do it other than killing yourself to do it. None of the places I worked including now was fully staff; the workload kept getting heavy and the quite period that use to happen around the summer time rarely seen anymore. With no reward for the nurses that stick it out and more leaving because of burn out and stress.

Now I find myself wondering if I have pick the correct career for myself. Should I have done something more creative? Or done something that helps people in a different way, where I did not feel like I am killing myself do so. I am now not sure I have a plan. Do I want to forge a path in this career?

I have been thinking about changing career path to one of my other passion. Do more writing or an internship in photography, or look at teaching.  There some many different things I could do. I guess I am saying I don’t know what next, and that scares me a lot.