A nurse "spends a fair bit of time shedding tears" when she hears of colleagues "desperate to feed to their kids" as mental health and cost of living crisis collide.
Carmel O'Boyle, a frontline NHS nurse in Liverpool, said "the burnout is happening now" as nurses across the country work with a shortage of nearly 40,000 while faced with the stress of working through the pandemic, mounting waiting lists, and a rising cost of living. A survey by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) states only a quarter of shifts had the planned number of registered nurses on shift, with three quarters of respondents in the North West of England saying they had a shortfall of one or more registered nurses on shift, a situation the RCN described at "critical". Carmel said "patients are suffering" as a result.
The 41-year-old told the ECHO about the "heartbreaking" stories she hears in her role as chair of the Royal College of Nurses' (RCN) North West board, as nurses struggle through the accumulating pressures. Carmel, who lives in Kensington, said one nurse had to siphon fuel from her husband's car so she could get to work and was found by a priest "distressed" and "sobbing" after her cards got declined in a supermarket, leaving her with no food for her kids.
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Carmel was a healthcare assistant before becoming a nurse more than five years ago because of the "terrible" responsibility-to-pay ratio in her previous job. Now, Carmel feels lucky to have a second job as a sessional lecturer at Liverpool John Moores University, she said: "Without that, I literally wouldn't be able to pay my bills."
The same RCN survey of 20,000 nurses found roughly 40% in the country were satisfied with their pay level. Nurses have starting salary of around £20,000 and a midpoint Band 5 salary of over £25,000. A proposed 3% pay rise would deliver a pay cut in real times because prices are rising faster than their wages.
This "enrages" Carmel, who said: "We cannot go on with another pay cut this year. A below inflation pay award is a pay cut, and the more you take away these people's wages, you will see more nurses in poverty. We cannot look after the population without nurses, and we can't do that without proper pay and without safe staffing."
Faced with a mountain of waiting lists that piled up during the pandemic, with the lasting effects of working through the pandemic, and now the growing financial stress of the rising cost of living, Carmel fears nurses are facing a mental health crisis.
She said: "As much as I can say it's really difficult, I love it. Every nurse will tell you they came into the job because they love the variety and the chance every single day to make a difference to somebody, and that is what people hold on to. But the reality is, we are massively understaffed in every single different area of nursing that I speak to people in."
Carmel is suffering from long covid after catching the virus in January, and she knows others with long covid or the lasting mental health impact of putting their lives on the line, particularly in the early days of the pandemic. Carmel worked at an acute trust treating covid patients for a month before she was told to shield, and that month still gives her nightmares.
She said: "It's emotional trauma and physical trauma as well. I had a nurse a couple of weeks ago telling me she's now developed night terrors, because she's seeing her patients over and over again gasping for breath, dying in front of her. But still, they're going into work, carrying on and trying to bring the NHS back to where we were pre-pandemic."
The 41-year-old added: "Because we all know the staffing levels are so poor, nobody wants to be off, but the workforce is in crisis. They're exhausted. People keep telling us, 'We'll recruit internationally and we're going to bring you 30,000 nurses', well we're 4,500 nurses, where are they coming from? You can't grow a nurse overnight."
Nearly half of new joiner nurses came from overseas in the last year, and the UK is recruiting from a third of the world's most short-staffed countries. This includes 14 on the government's own 'red list' of countries that shouldn't be actively recruited in, according to the RCN.
The RCN's chief executive Pat Cullen said action is needed after 25,000 registered nurses left last year, they said: "Don't ever think that it is normal to not have enough staff to meet the needs of patients. It is not. Today, members are letting the full truth be known - nursing is saying loud and clear that enough is enough. If there was ever a time to break this cycle – it is now."
She added: "To those from Government listening to my words - we have had enough. The patients and those we care for have had enough. We are tired, fed up, demoralised, and some of us are leaving the profession because we have lost hope. Do something about it - we are not going away."
