International Nurses Day: Celebration or Mental Health Crisis
Is it really a cause for celebration as record numbers leave the profession?
“The greatest threat to global health is the workforce shortage” — International Council of Nurses
On 12th May 2022, the birthday of Florence Nightingale and International Nurses Day, this was the statement released by the International Council of Nurses. The council are demanding action on investment in nursing, protection and safety of nurses.
In the UK in the last 5 years more nurses have left the nursing register than have joined it. Figures released at the end of 2021 show that in the UK for the first time in several years there has been a 25% increase in the number of nurses leaving the profession.
When surveyed nurses in the NHS cited too much pressure, workplace culture, staffing and disillusionment with the quality of care as reasons for leaving.
I am one of those 25%. In April 2021 after 27 years as nurse, doing a job I mostly Ioved, I too left the NHS. My reasons for leaving were not wholly disillusionment, as I wanted to pursue other things. However, the culmination of a year of working through a pandemic with increased pressures, changes in my role and the inability to do my job in the way I wanted, sealed the deal
During the first wave of the pandemic, across the UK, neighbours stepped outside the confines of their homes, they stood on doorsteps, they leaned out of windows and hung over balconies. United we banged saucepans and sang and clapped and cheered for the NHS, for the nurses who were putting themselves out there, for those who were going the extra mile to care.
Nurses were deemed to be superheroes. Albeit superheroes without capes.
Despite my own slight discomfort, I recognised this was a necessary communal acknowledgement of work being done by healthcare workers to deal with the images of horror that was being brandished across our TV screens. The public were scared. We were all scared, and this was a way of saying thank you to those who were in the thick of it
During the second and third waves this didn’t happen. I recall a half hearted attempt to resurrect the Thursday night clap, but it had fizzled out. Perhaps on reflection, the same was happening to myself and many of my nursing colleagues.
We were slowly fizzling out.
We hadn’t been prepared. How could we have been. We were seeing death on a scale not seen before. I don’t say that lightly. I am a nurse who spent the majority of her nursing life in palliative care. I have seen a lot of death.
We were seeing people die without family and witnessing heartbreaking last conversations via mobile phones. We were caring for dying colleagues. We were doing this, and then we were going home.
It wasn’t all new. As nurses, caring for the sick and vulnerable when under pressure is what we do. It’s what we had been doing for a very long time. It was the scale of things, it was the fear, it was the realisation of the inability to properly care ourselves whilst caring for our patients, which was new.
Anyone who works in the NHS will tell you, that even before we entered a pandemic, the NHS was heading towards a crisis. Chronically short staffing, lack of resources, increased workloads, increasingly sick patients, unreasonable public expectations, lack of time to do the job we trained for and lack of emotional support for ourselves.
All of this was already contributing to increasing sickness levels among staff due to poor mental health.
As nurses we have never been prepared emotionally to know how to care for ourselves. Nurses are endlessly trained in areas such as health and safety, in clinical skills and in how to keep their patients safe.
Nurses are not trained in how to emotionally care for themselves or even each other.
Time is not given to teaching either new or experienced nurses in how to manage their feelings, or how to protect themselves from being emotionally weighed down by the constant drip feed of sadness and distress which is part of the nursing day.
The emotional impact of the job is rarely acknowledged. It is expected that nurses will cope. They are encouraged to walk away at the end of the day, to leave work at work. The reality for many, is that this is not possible. This has been highlighted during a pandemic when many will have gone home with experiences and images they can never just leave behind. The consequence is going off sick with emotional stress, and at worse good nurses leaving the profession.
So if we are really going to address the real reason behind the greatest threat to global health, then we need to start by addressing how we train nurses to emotionally care for themselves.
Investment needs to be in the emotional and mental health training of the nurses who care for us. So in turn they can care for themselves, rather than see no alternative but to leave the profession.