“It will be four in the morning and one of the nurses is just sat with her patient, stroking their hair or holding their hand.'
The image of separation in the final moments is among the cruellest of the pandemic. Families are kept away; stuck outside an intensive care unit or told to stay at home and await news, unable to be with their loved one at the very end. What this means for the coronavirus patient can cause the most distress.
The following night, after another shift in one of the three intensive care departments at St. George’s Hospital, south London, Luke spoke on Skype for hours. He described what the ICU is really like during this crisis for those being cared for; the messages passed between families and patients through staff, and the humanity that fills the units.
This can be scary for patients but, “We’re there and we calm them down,” he said. “We talk to them and explain things. We say, ‘It’s OK, don’t worry, it [the ventilator] is helping you breathe.’” Nurses and healthcare assistants comb their hair, too. “You’ll be saying, ‘Oh, you look lovely.’ Or, ‘You might have to have a hair dye after this but don’t worry everyone outside is struggling to get a hair dye too.’”
The calls from family members can be practical, to help staff provide the most effective care: telling them their father or wife hates needles, for example, so nurses can keep that in mind when taking blood. “It’s the most insane kind of feeling for everyone in the ward,” said Luke. “It’s news the whole night – the whole week — that this patient might be able to leave. It’s something to cherish.”
The unpredictable trajectory of COVID-19 means sometimes this can happen quite quickly, even after showing signs of recovery — but either way, they do everything possible. “For the majority of people we keep going even though the signs are hinting that they’re not doing well, because people can pull through,” he said.
“She just grabbed something from me and did the most amazing manoeuvre of washing and holding the patient up and was like, ‘You need to hold this and you need to push as hard as you can!’” Luke obeyed as quickly as he could as the nurse turned to him again. “She said, ‘You need to realise this is wartime nursing now.’”The image stuck with him, ringing out over the following weeks as the peak of cases and deaths hit the unit in the middle of April.
Support between colleagues has been incredible, he said, but “that’s not to say people aren’t scared because people really, really were. A lot of colleagues had quite dark conversations about ‘if and when I get sick I want x, y, and z treatment.’” Many are hungry, unable to grab a break or find food. In the first few weeks, in particular, panic-buying meant supermarkets were impossible to use, with empty shelves awaiting nurses and doctors — if they were even open in the hours that ICU staff needed to shop. In the middle of a night shift, in the comparative quiet, the physical and mental stresses swarm junior staff like him.
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