Frontline nurse: Health staff facing ‘mental health epidemic’ post-Covid
Ward sister says staff are struggling with visiting restrictions
A nurse working at the coalface of the pandemic says virtual visits are ‘heart-breaking.’
Downtown Cool FM was granted exclusive access to Daisy Hill Hospital in Newry, as we approach one year since Covid-19 was first detected in Northern Ireland.
Natalie McCann is a theatre nurse for the southern Trust and has been in the profession for seven years now.
She was redeployed amid the third surge of the Coronavirus pandemic and is now a ward sister.
Natalie told us the most distressing part of nursing Covid-19 patients is denying their families access:
“In any area where we’re wearing the red PPE which is in all the Covid wards, you can come in for one hour at the end of life, just one person for one hour.
“It’s heart-breaking for example if their family member was in a nursing home and the nursing home hasn’t allowed visiting they might not have seen them for months before that and now we’re telling them well one person can come in for an hour and that’s it.
“I don’t know how people can cope with it I know the staff have been very, very distressed over it,” Natalie said.
She added: “It’s hard not to take that home with you, to think I’ve told that person one person can come in but they might have three children and I know it’s on the family to pick but it is cruel and I just know if it was my family and if it was my three sisters, I don’t know how one person could take that on themselves.”
As we mark the first anniversary of the first case of Covid-19 in Northern Ireland, we asked how our health service is coping and what the future holds.
Natalie told us she is extremely concerned about her colleague’s mental health and believes a lot of health staff will need psychological support when the virus begins to abate:
“The only way I can sum it up is everybody is trying their best, that’s all we can do at the minute, I worry for the mental state of a lot of my colleagues.
“We do have great support, the trust has brought in staff support services but there is only so much you can see every day before it takes a toll and I’m just worried for the future.
“Nursing staff across Northern Ireland will be in difficult situations to try and get past what they’ve done.
“Not by their own choice, not letting families in, that has had a massive impact for me of the guilt that you feel and even though you’re doing it because it’s the policy, it’s your job, you’re doing it to try and protect patients but nursing’s a caring profession.”