‘ICU work feels like what a soldier might experience’ jessica, 35

NHS nurse Jessica Filoteo struggled with being on the front line, looking after Covid patients in intensive care.

At 35, she had spent 10 years as a cath lab nurse but was redeployed at a major London hospital in March last year.

After a day’s training, the hardest part was dealing with the patients who were still awake.

She said: “I was with an old man who was having difficulty breathing as a doctor told him they would have to intubate him, and that there was a big chance he would never wake up.

“I wanted to cry, but I thought, ‘Who’s going to be strong for the patient?’ I held his hand because I didn’t know what to say. Then he asked for a pen and paper and wrote a note, saying, ‘My daughter doesn’t know where my valuables are.’ It was devastating.”

Jessica’s emotional state soon spiralled. She added tearfully: “I really didn’t like coming in to work. I thought about saying no, but then I thought, ‘How can you when all these people need you?’ Every time I went home the things I’d seen kept replaying in my head.

“When I went to sleep I would dream I was at work, so when I woke up it was if I’d just done another shift. I began to get really tired and demotivated. I’d start crying for no reason. I was easily agitated and thought, ‘I don’t want to do this any more.’

“There was a time when I felt that I couldn’t speak to anybody. I didn’t want to talk to the other nurses because they were going through the same thing and I didn’t want to burden them.

“A mental health coach approached me and said he could see how distressed I was. After the first few sessions I realised just how much I needed help.”

Jessica continued her sessions with a psychologist when she returned to the cath ward in June 2020, and also took up meditation and yoga.

But she was one of the lucky ones: “Some of my colleagues didn’t look for help straight away and ended up in a worse state. One friend who worked in another ICU ward ended up off sick for several months and on medication.

“I’ve never been to war, but it does feel like what a soldier might experience when they get home. The ICU ward was a whole different world, anybody who saw that would have been deeply affected.”