Living with someone on the NHS frontline

By Adam Lloyd, Partner at Newgate Communications

We are reminded every day that the Covid-19 outbreak, if unchecked, could overwhelm the NHS. Every day I am left in no doubt that the virus is already placing a considerable burden on care provision as a significant proportion of NHS resources are diverted in readiness for the expected upsurge in demand for intensive care beds.

As a Sister on an intensive care ward my partner is seeing the preparations first-hand as wards are repurposed for intensive care, normally busy corridors lye eerily silent and the essential interactions between the clinical staff are profoundly impacted by the new rules on social distancing.

When she gets home from a shift (typically 13 hours day or night), apart from being physically knackered, she is mentally exhausted by the almost endless dilemmas she and her colleagues face as they  balance providing the best possible care against observing the many new practices necessary to contain the virus.

As she wearily recounts the challenges of her day, three things in particular strike me. In a finite world the resources being diverted to deal with Covid-19 will mean that less is available to treat other illnesses. Whatever your opinions on the cost of running the NHS, the staff who make it work day-in day-out are amazing and almost certainly underpaid. And most importantly, there is a limit to how much we can ask of our frontline NHS workers and it has to be down to all of us to do our bit.

Observing the rules on social distancing, not panic buying (there is surely enough for everyone) and helping those in our communities who can’t help themselves. These are things we can all do and they’re not that difficult, not really and not compared to what my partner and all the other nurses are doing.