Life and death on the frontline
Nurses, clinicians ICU consultants often have no time to protect themselves if a patient is in need of urgent help
SCENARIO 1: You are a senior nurse in a nursing home.
It’s the middle of the night and you’re between PPE changes when a patient calls out in pain.
You run to glance through the door to their room and see your patient on the floor, distressed and flailing wildly.
There’s no-one else available to help – your team has been hopelessly stretched by months of fighting Covid.
You know the patient – who is liable to injure themselves or worse at any moment – is Covid positive.
What do you do – waste vital minutes suiting up properly or rush in to help as you are? SCENARIO 2:
You are a hospital clinician working in an acute setting.
Your patient has stopped breathing. A year ago your team would commence CPR immediately and perhaps warn ICU to prepare for a new admission.
But it will take four minutes to don suitable PPE to protect yourself from aerosol exposure – and ICU is almost full of Covid patients.
What do you do?
SCENARIO 3: You are an ICU consultant.
You have vast experience in making judgments about life and death. But these are unprecedented times.
There are patients who in normal circumstances would receive ICU care and your team may have to decide which ones don’t get it. How will you decide?
SCENARIOS like these are now playing out daily in hospitals, nursing homes and residential institutions throughout the country.
There are nurses who, when required, put themselves at risk without a moment’s thought.
And there are clinicians who make decisions they know would have been different a year ago.