"If we don't do something now, we've lost the NHS."
This is the genuine feeling on picket lines today as exhausted, frustrated and angry nurses walk out from the jobs they care deeply about once more. They feel they have no choice but to do this, this is a battle for the future of the National Health Service.
If you want an insight into the current conditions our nurses are working under, then I urge you to listen to this harrowing account from one long-serving nurse I spoke to on the picket line at the New Royal Liverpool Hospital this morning.
With fear and anger in her voice, she said: "I worked a shift recently, I had been asked to do an overtime shift because the ward wasn't safe and when I got there, the skill mix wasn't right on the ward and then I got moved from the ward because there was dire need in other areas.
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"When I questioned that and said, 'well that leaves this ward short', the response was, 'there is not a single ward in the hospital that has got a safe number of staff in.'
Imagine a large city hospital with such poor staffing levels that no ward is considered safe - and this was not in the middle of a major incident, it was a standard day.
She continued: "This is a normal day, a regular occurrence, there's patients in corridors, nurses going home in tears because they can't provide the care, nobody wants to leave a patient that is soiled, but when you haven't actually physically got anywhere to change them or the staff to be able to provide that care - that is what is destroying nurses' morale right now.
"If it was your loved one in that situation it would break your heart and it breaks our hearts to not be able to provide the care that we need to."
That same nurse then told me that on one morning recently three staff resigned at the same time, from the same department - they couldn't take it anymore. They certainly will not be the last.
Holding back tears, she added: "We just don't feel like we can make change any other way. This is the worst it has ever been. If we don't do something now, we've lost the NHS."
This is not hyperbole. This is the same message I have heard from countless nurses on picket lines today and on Thursday, on social media and in other conversations. No one I have spoken to is doing this because they just fancy a bit more cash - they are doing it because they no longer feel this is a safe profession to work in.
Take Ann Fordham, she is 59-years-old and has dedicated her life to caring for others, working as a frontline nurse for 30 years. Walking out on strike is one of the hardest decisions she has ever had to make, but like so many others, she feels she no longer has a choice.
She said: "I am sick and tired of seeing colleagues worked to the bone, not being able to do their job properly and patients, in effect, not being looked after properly. Nobody is listening to us anymore. We have no choice, this is our only choice."
She said the current situation is the worst she has known in three decades, adding: "I don't know how we will continue because nurses are exhausted. We've been through a pandemic, people decided to clap for us, we had a government that didn't support us, we had nurses that save the Prime Minister's life and this is the thanks we get. Now we have had enough, this is our last resort.
"The government don't want unionisation, they want to smash unions and they are going to use nurses as a standing point. We are willing to negotiate, our leader has said we will sit around a table and negotiate, the Prime Minister won't negotiate."
For many nurses out on the pickets in Liverpool today, there remained a sense of shock that this situation has been allowed to continue and that the government is still refusing to even enter negotiations.
But alongside the shock and the fear and the anger there is a powerful resolve and a collective determination that their voices will be heard. They are not backing down from the fight of their lives.
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