ok I feel I need to add a few things here.
I am a mental health nurse caring for over 65’s in an NHS mental health hospital.
I can’t stress this enough, please please please stay at home!
If u really need to go for a walk then go at night when no one is around, stay away from people and that includes ur family and friends and strangers.
I have friends from all aspects of nursing and we are all scared, scared for u catching it, our parents, our loved ones, our friends, our kids and us, we r terrified of catching this deadly disease. I can’t believe people have treated this as a day off to go places!
There isn’t enough beds at hospitals to keep u alive when 1000’s of others will need them at the same time.
U do know doctors will be deciding who needs the ventilator more, u or someone else, and they will go by who is younger and fitter and more likely to live?
My work has been provided with, in my opinion, the most basic of PPE ever. We have 2 oxygen compressors that are to be used if one of our 60 odd patients get this disease, just 2! And to be honest we have never ever used these machines, all staff are to get trained on how to use them and we r out of our depth here, our big hospital will not take our patients given most of them are end of life dementia patients.
We r out of our depth and we are scared and tired and so angry that people are not taking this seriously.
My family are currently self isolating due to my child displaying symptoms, he’s fine we think though we still have another 8 days to see if we have any symptoms however soon I will need to return to work and deal with it.
Covid teams are being set up to deal with dying patients in the community because there isn’t enough beds so palliative care is being done in people’s homes when they can’t be brought to hospital.
I’m not scaremongering, I’m begging u all to stay at home with ur family, try and enjoy this time with ur family and bake cakes, read books, watch films, decorate if u can, do anything but dont mix with ur family and go out.
Tomorrow I won’t be seeing my own mum, I will FaceTime her instead, I miss her but I would miss her more if she was dead.
I’m sorry if I sound like a moan, my anxiety has been terrible this week however it’s made me realise what’s important.
Keep safe and for the last time, stay inside xx