London Doctor Shares Grim Reality of NHS Frontline Fight Against Coronavirus

A doctor at a London hospital says doctors are “terrified” by the increasing rate of fatal Covid-19 cases pushing the NHS to the limit.

Boris Johnson has hinted that the UK could plunge into another lockdown as new variants of the virus spread through the population and more patients die alone without their loved ones by their side.

But the prime minister has refused to give in to pressure to close schools to curb the spread of the virus during one of the worst weeks of the pandemic in Britain.

Another 454 people died of coronavirus in the 24 hours to Sunday, bringing the death toll from the pandemic in the UK to 75,024.

And today marked the sixth consecutive day of 50,000 daily cases, after 54,990 infections were recorded.

As reported exclusively by the Mirror, the surge in admissions has made Dr. Katie Sanderson’s colleagues fear for their lives because of “inappropriate” PPE.

Now Dr Sanderson, who works in acute medicine at a central London hospital, has shared her front-line experience with readers of Mirror.

In his own words, here is his full account:

We are much better at managing Covid than we were at the start of the pandemic, and today’s challenges are different than in the first wave, when we didn’t know how to manage the disease and hospitals weren’t prepared for it. .

This time around, the sheer volume of critically ill patients arriving at the ER doors and the challenge of treating them with limited staff means that many hospitals in London and the South East are in trouble.

In the end, the limiting factor is staff, and ultimately more patients means less time for us as physicians to spend on each one.

Our nurses are getting thinner, to a point where people simply cannot be cared for as we would like.

The capacity of the Intensive Care Units (ITU) is important, but most patients are not cared for in the ITU; we are treating very sick patients in the medical wards, where I work, wards that would not normally treat patients who are so ill.

Even with normal staffing levels, this would be a challenge, but the absence of staff is close to 10% in some areas.

Staff are scared that the PPE required for healthcare workers in the UK is woefully inadequate.

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But ITU staff are better protected and have lower rates of infection, illness and death than staff in medical rooms, who are exposed to high levels of the virus wearing a thin plastic apron, gloves, a liquid that does not fit. good. Heavy duty surgical mask and some eye protection.

As I put on and take off for the hundredth time, I think to myself ‘well it’s better than nothing’, and I wonder how the hell it got to this, nine months later.

Enough time to create a human life, but not to provide hundreds of thousands of workers with the basic means to protect their own.

Things are incredibly difficult now. Hospitals are doing their best to expand ITU and wards capabilities, with all hands on deck, even taking patients to other parts of the country.

We want to give everyone with Covid the best possible chance of survival.

But each new preventable infection compromises this.

What is essential now is that people do everything possible not to contract the virus, because in ten days a proportion will become seriously ill and hospitals will be under even greater pressure than they are today.

This week I sat with a dying man on the other side of his wife’s bed. She said, ‘How did this happen? Have we been so careful?

The answer is that this new strain is incredibly infectious. We need to get back to the absolute basics, and everyone needs to come together and do everything they can to ensure fewer people die.

Don’t have any social contact you don’t need, wear a mask, wash your hands, and socialize away. Isolate if you have symptoms and isolate if you have come into contact with someone with coronavirus. Don’t make up your own rules.

And don’t think this is a disease that only affects other people. We have people in their twenties in ITU with no medical history. Every day we see very sick patients who, when asked if they have medical problems, say no.

Many of the people he refers to who have pre-existing conditions lead rich and active lives that would have continued for decades had they not been interrupted by Covid.

We want all of these people to have the opportunity to fight, and that opportunity is compounded by each new infection. Each new infection is a possible hospital admission.

What is most difficult for me, working with patients who are dying, is not having the time to give them the best possible ending.

Good communication takes time, and I think taking care of people who won’t make it is just as important as running an ITU.

It is essential that we can ensure that patients feel as comfortable as possible, that their families know what is happening, and that they can say goodbye in these dire circumstances.

But when we are so few and we have so many admissions, this becomes incredibly difficult.

These deaths are tragic, but they are made infinitely more when staff do not have time to take care of them as they deserve.

So please do what you can as the NHS is putting all its nerves up to this horrible challenge.