Nurse in tearful video considers quitting

A CRITICAL care nurse who shared a tearful video of herself urging people to stop panic-buying food at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic has revealed she is considering leaving the profession.

In the footage circulated on social media last March, Dawn Bilbrough, inset, from York, made a heartfelt plea for shoppers to stop stockpiling after being unable to find fruit or vegetables at a supermarket following a 48-hour shift.

Reflecting on the moment a year later, Ms Bilbrough said it was “difficult to hear and to see” and that the video showed her at “one of my lowest points”.

She told BBC Radio 4’s The World This Weekend that working in critical care during the pandemic had been “relentless, incredibly traumatic, physically and emotionally exhausting”.

Asked if she had considered leaving her profession in the last year, she emphasised she and her colleagues had “remained professional” but that it was “a human response” to reconsider a career after experiencing “high levels of stress”.

She added: “Long term, I am reconsidering my future. I will certainly remain in nursing for the foreseeable, but long term I’m not really sure what my plans are going to be.”

Ms Bilbrough recalled once finishing a shift at 8pm after caring for a “pod” of four Covid patients, only to return the next day to find all had died and been replaced with different people.

“We were kind of facing that quite often and that’s just unheard of, and that’s a great burden,” she added.