Exhausted, despairing and racked with guilt
WHY I QUIT AS NHS NURSE
AN NHS nurse has quit her dream job after “chronic guilt” at not being able to give proper care to patients.
In an open letter, she told how cuts are putting an ever-increasing strain on already overstretched, stressed staff.
And the woman, who is in her 20s but asked to stay anonymous, “won’t return until the environment is safe”.
She said: “You live with a chronic guilt as you cannot provide the care you want to give every individual.
“Basic tasks like helping someone wash or eat cannot be done and it pains me to admit there have been times I’ve not been able to help someone... as A&E are bringing yet another patient through the door.”
It comes after an NHS doctor wrote in last week’s Mirror about an A&E shift where a lack of beds left patients waiting up to 13 hours. In the nurse’s damning letter, in the Plymouth Herald, Devon, she said she “loved my job” but staff have no time for toilet or food breaks.
She went on: “Only at the end of your 12-hour shift, when your colleagues take over, are you able to sit down and do your paperwork, meaning having to stay an extra hour or two late (unpaid), you go home exhausted, despairing and listing all the things you haven’t done.
“You go to bed, wake up and do it all over again.” The nurse added when told about the “unsafe nature of the unit”, managers can only give a “sympathetic look”. She said: “There is nothing they can do, there is no one to help.”
Last week the doctor told the Mirror: “During times of crisis, accounts of the NHS tend to drift awkwardly into stories of shock.”
Figures for December show just 85.1% of patients were seen within four hours at A&E. The 95% target has not been hit since 2015.