Edit A nurse on the frontlines during covid 19

<p>Remembering her time in intensive care, Dr Shotter explained how staff are used to dealing with very sick people, and of course death, and difficult decisions in an intensive care department, but that usually you have patients with a mixture of stories as to why they are there. This was vastly different because every single patient had the same, albeit with small variations. This made it a very strange environment.<br />Similarly, although intensive care is not necessarily a pleasant place to be, it's normally a place where people are surrounded by family and loved ones, and doctors and other staff have a lot of contact with families, talking to them, explaining things to them, but here families weren't allowed in, not routinely.</p> <p>Sophie explained how they were telling people good and bad news over the telephone but were able to accommodate some families at the end of life. Many families chose to stay away however, even if the team had found a way to do it, for fear of their own safety. Sophie recalls finding that very strange and not at all easy to grapple with.</p> <p>Sophie has high praise for the NHS during this period. “It (the NHS) did cope except for maybe a couple of London hospitals that reached close to breaking point. But outside of London, we never got close to our forecasted possibility. We were still well over capacity, but the systems they had put in place meant we coped very well”, she noted.</p> <p>“The anaesthetic and intensive care consultants were put on a far more intense work rate, doing resident night shifts, which some of them haven't done for 15 years”, she recalled.</p>

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