NOW TRY IT YOURSELF THE FRONTLINE NHS STAFF WHO COLOUR IN TO SWITCH OFF

CONSULTANT anaesthetist Dr Karen Stacey started her new job in early February 2020, a huge achievement after years of exams and training.

But almost immediately the NHS was hit by wave after wave of Covid-19 patients and she was thrown into the hardest year of her career, both mentally and physically. “It was unpredictable and relentless,” she says.

Anaesthetists were at the heart of patient care on the coronavirus frontline, working almost constant 12-hour shifts for nine weeks in hot and claustrophobic PPE.

“We were putting people on to ventilators, inserting breathing tubes and taking patients up to intensive care where we helped look after them,” says Karen, 38, who is based at Charing Cross

Hospital in London.

She and her colleagues feared for their own lives as they diligently cared for sick and dying patients.

“I wrote a will and I wasn’t alone,” she says.

“We anticipated that we might lose people within our department and, sadly, we have lost some nurses to Covid and a couple of theatre assistants. Everyone was terrified. That made it difficult to switch off.”

Dealing with exhaustion and stress, and no longer able to see friends, Karen suffered from insomnia and a loss of appetite.

“I couldn’t even concentrate on a half-hour TV show,” she says. Even mindfulness apps didn’t work. “I couldn’t concentrate long enough to get into them,” she says.

But then a friend mentioned she had been given an adult colouring book, reminding Karen of her own stack that she had relied upon to de-stress while studying.

One sunny March morning after three consecutive night shifts, the exhausted medic came home, dug out a Johanna Basford book and sat in the garden.

“I knew I needed to sleep but had to unwind first,” she says. “I opened a beautiful, double page of leaves and

LIFELINE: Karen Stacey turned to colouring to unwind thought I would colour a couple of them. Five hours later, I was still sitting in the sun, with my two cats, happily colouring in – but I felt so much better.”

What was it specifically that helped? “It was totally immersive,” she says. “I didn’t hear anything else going on. It fully focused my energy and I almost forgot that Covid existed for a few hours.”

The more Karen coloured, the calmer she felt. She started sleeping again and her appetite slowly came back. So she promoted the activity on her hospital’s website.

“I’d walk into the theatre coffee room, and there’d be a whole load of nurses sat there colouring in,” she says.

Colouring books also helped to relieve the boredom of recovering patients.

Karen, who is now on maternity leave after the birth of her daughter last month, has completed eight colouring-in books over the last year, swapping her 12-pack of felt tips for a 100-pack.

She says people shouldn’t dismiss it as a child’s activity. “Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it,” she says. “You might be 60 years old and haven’t coloured something since you were 10 but give it a go. We all need to find sanity in this madness.”