London’s ICU nurses detail ‘diluted’ care, depression and disaster during the UK’s deadly second wave
Article summary
CNN) Last summer, when England’s first peak of the coronavirus pandemic had subsided, Fazilah, an ICU nurse at a central London hospital, sat down to write her resignation letter. For months, she says, a wave of depression had enveloped her, but she had been too busy saving other people’s lives to be able to identify it, or process it. […] A number of ICU workers CNN spoke to say they’ve been pushed to “dilute” the level of care due to the alarming surge of cases, saying that in many cases, they are treating far more than two patients at a time, and sometimes as many as eight. […] But patients aren’t kept in coffee shops nor in hospital corridors, she said, adding that maintaining patients’ dignity and privacy is at the forefront of all care. […] “The burden of having three patients is immense,” she said, explaining that Covid-19 patients add an additional element of unpredictability, as they can shift from being stable to being in cardiac arrest “out of nowhere.”
