Intensive Care Nurse Describes The Horror of Working on the Front Line | Good Morning Britain

Johanne, you have been a

nurse

for ten years, you are in a small trust, 15

intensive

care

beds, you have children and how was the weekend, how are you coping with what you are seeing? I worked two long shifts on Saturday and Sunday. and the best way I can describe it is unprecedented, it's just horrible, we're so busy and exhausted I'm absolutely gutted today, this is my day off and it's nothing like we've ever seen before, tell us all, tell us what is happening there, every single person in your unit someone who is suffering with coronavirus right now I would say 99% positive for coronavirus yes jo-ann one of the hardest things for all the doctors on the nursing staff yes is that normally when people are seriously ill you can see family members who can they can see their loved ones there is a kind of intimacy in that relationship as people face life or death here the most brutal part of this seems that, in addition to people They really live or die, it's the lack of any intimacy this poor boy, you know, he's a man who was 13 years old and couldn't even be buried with any member of his family there he had to die alone and we broke our hearts and this it must be happening all over the country um yeah, sorry um yeah I mean, the hardest part of the job is taking

care

of people who are immensely sick, critical care,

intensive

care is where you get to where you are immensely sick and our relationship with family members It is very narrow because most of our patients are intubated and so are we.

I have no feedback from them so all we do is with family members and right now it's all over the phone and it's made even worse by the fact that we were wearing masks, which you know, I'm happy to do it, okay , is the sacrifice we make. a lot, but when you're trying to convey emotions and someday I'm talking and your voice is muffled and you're trying to scream loudly, you can, you can and you can't, give them the verbal cues that you can't. reading their verbal cues and just hearing people cry on the phone is just heartbreaking.

I can't describe it as anything other than that and Joanne, you're there not only as a

nurse

but as a representative of the family, yeah, because they can't. Be at your loved one's bedside. I mean, that's an extra responsibility and burden for you, isn't it? Yes, I mean your relatives will say, please can you pass me a message like I said? I love you and please get well soon. I will love your house and it is heartbreaking. I can't think of another word to describe it. I think I cried about five times at work yesterday because I feel so desperate for family members.

I feel very desperate for them. We've had personal experience of this, you know, one of our co-presenters, Kate Garraway, her husband Derek is very ill in a London hospital, so I've been talking to her and him, you know she's in the same position. than many. other people, but one of the problems is that they are all so busy that no one can spend the time they would like to inform people who cannot go to the hospital, they feel completely helpless at home and, obviously, in all our thoughts. with Kate and Derek and the family what we bring to dr.

Alex and has been described as a war zone. You're in a busy hospital in Lewisham, south London, would you describe it as that

good

morning

tool? And yes, it is very busy now and once when you go to work. In many ways you think about preparing for battle, I think emotionally and in some ways physically as well. When you get there, you know you're going into a university and you're doing really, really difficult situations, you see people who are incredibly sick. We are willing to do the best we can for everyone, but we are seeing people dying from the corona virus and that is very, very difficult and Choked Echo said there regarding the family and we cannot allow that patient to see his family even if They're really bad at a university, which is very difficult because you know it's our natural instinct to want to come for the family, come for the patient and make those situations, as you know, as comfortable as possible and we can't do that. . that's really the way we want it, which is heartbreaking dr.

Alex um John says that 99% of those currently in his wards are coronavirus patients. I mean, what you're watching on A&E and are you worried that people are staying away from Annie and maybe need to come for other reasons? Well, I think the hospital didn't do fantastic for the managers, two consultants and down we divided the department in two, so we have the green department in a red part department, so in case of coronavirus or suspected cases of ekron virus versus other unrelated health conditions and Of course, we still see people suffering from heart attacks, strokes, other serious medical problems that we need to take care of.

We also have this additional cohort of CO2 patients coming in with suspected coronavirus, so we are getting busier and the pressure is increasing. I would say we are doing very well at the moment. I think the system that we've created at the hospital has made expediting and seeing patients as quickly as possible and really effective, but yes, we are seeing a large number of cases, I mean, within an hour, I think we saw such instead of four to five blue light cases of coronavirus last week, that is, the sickest patients essentially arrive by ambulance and that is a lot of pressure because they take into account those who come.

Most may need to be intubated, which requires a lot of input from different specialties and a lot of care and attention, so yes, it's really difficult. I think you're worried about how worried Alex is about your own personal safety because now you're reading. as we are all about people in the health service on the

front

line

dying midwives doctors nurses this is happening. I think anyone who says they're not worried about collecting coronaviruses isn't being completely open-minded because of course we're worried about the vast majority of those who are young and fit having a mild to moderate illness, but that's not a guarantee, as we have seen in recent days with some of my colleagues who died following the tragic loss of young John, aged 23. and breastfeed it, it's not guaranteed that you're going to have mild to moderate illness and we know that you know throughout this fight, this battle, that we're probably going to lose more colleagues, which is scary, it's scary, but we know that we have a job to do where we train ourselves as doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, patient therapists, etc., because we want to help people want to contribute our grain of sand and in times like this, we are doing the best we can, but It's really important, I would say it's absolutely heartbreaking to see people not following the instructions that the vast majority of people follow, but it's the only word that can be described as heartbreaking.

The other day I drove around Clapham Common to work on mental preparation that we were going to A&E and I saw people you know lying around and sunbathing and if only they knew the risks and could see through our eyes and see what we can see and feel we can experiment on a knee, they wouldn't, Joe. and you agree with that, yes, if I could only know everything that Alex just said and to me it's the same thing: we are seeing younger people who are normally very, very fit and well and they are being beaten up and becoming very sick. obviously when you get close to the worst and when you hear that NHS staff are dying, it's like one of our own, one of our family, has died and it really hits you, it's like a punch in the chest because we go to work to strive. there on the

front

line

s and when people flaunt the advice they are given and just walk out without a care it feels like a slap in the face and everything that we are doing, the hard work that we are doing and going above and beyond is almost like If we were saying them, them just so you don't care