“It’s my first day on the ward,” one young nurse told me, as she appeared to hold back tears.
Junior nurses say they are being left in charge of the poorly staffed infectious ward because senior staff are all being sent to the ICU on different floors. Graduate and trainee nurses are being put in difficult positions and are taking on tasks typically done by senior nurses, as they grapple with meeting patient care and going by the book.
“It’s a complete and utter bloody shambles,” the war veteran told me.
As problems arose, we’d try to find humour in them.
For days there were no drinking cups, because they ran out, and nurses were dissolving medication in the tiny plastic medicine cups, which we kept using for days. “Must be budget cuts,” we joked. No toilet paper for a day? We used paper hand towels instead. Even the microwave was removed from the ward due to COVID, we just sympathetically shrugged.
No one expects the public health system to operate like a hotel. You’re there to get better, not to have a good time. But when a doctor admitted that a junior staff member had needlessly attempted to draw blood from me, I started to feel unsafe.
We ran out of drinking cups, so our medication was put in tiny cups.Credit:Erin Pearson
And the cracks in a struggling system only became increasingly clear.
I was refused an MRI scan, ordered by a doctor, because staff said I was a COVID patient and they did not want me in the machine because they’d need to clean it afterwards. Ten days later the crippling pain in my back remains undiagnosed.
The state has had almost two years to get it right. But still the conditions on the ward were not fit for some of the state’s most unwell patients. When the ward ran out of blankets, one young nurse tried to use extra top sheets to keep a patient in his 90s warm.
“It’s a complete and utter bloody shambles,” the war veteran told me.
Loading
Camaraderie appeared strong, with junior nurses trying to support exhausted and overworked trainees. But the mood in the hallways outside the room was of stress, and had an air of chaos about it.
The nurses who are brave enough to don PPE and work in the COVID wards deserve to be adequately resourced and supported. Thank God for them. But who is looking out for them?
When you’re sick you want to feel safe. I discharged myself days earlier than I should have just to escape.
The Age contacted the hospital involved in this article.
*Elena is not her real name.
The Morning Edition newsletter is our guide to the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up here.
My nightmare in hospital as COVID stressed the system
Source: Philippines Alive
