麻豆视频

We have just passed the six-year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic. Somehow it feels so long ago, yet still so fresh in our minds. It was felt the world over, with many countries going into lockdown, and for those working in the health and care professions the pandemic was particularly devastating.   

I had the privilege of leading 7,000 nurses and midwives through the pandemic, an experience that had a profound impact on me – and I know I’m not alone in feeling that. Nursing made a real sacrifice and we had no time to process its impact. That’s why all this matters so much and why it feels personal. The effects of that time are still sitting below the surface for so many of us. 

We will never forget what we did and what we saw. I still think of the people we lost - those memories stay with you.  

In the years since the pandemic the RCN has made sure the voices and experiences of nursing staff have been heard at the UK COVID Inquiry. We presented evidence as a core participant in Module 3, which examined the pandemic’s impact on health systems across the four nations and how frontline services were affected.  

Yesterday the report for this module was published, and reading the findings brought back memories of the pandemic in vivid detail. But the truth is that even a report this long and detailed can never truly capture the trauma of being a frontline nurse in the pandemic. 

First and foremost, let me say that never again can nursing and the public be failed like this. Our profession was sent to fight a deadly virus short of tens of thousands of nurses, while inadequate protection and ineffectual guidance led to devastating outbreaks among staff.  

It’s clear that all these failings caused services to become quickly overwhelmed and unable to provide crucial surge capacity. The report shows that some intensive care staff to patient ratios were stretched from 1:1, up to 1:4 and as far as 1:6, all of which added to the impact on staff. That significantly undermined the pandemic response and cost lives, and it will live long in the memory of our profession.  

I fear we’re very good in this country at writing reports but then not doing enough with the recommendations. But governments have to grab these recommendations and apply them not only to the hypothetical next pandemic, but to the current crisis that still engulfs our health system. The ongoing shortage of beds and staff means that tonight there will be people lining corridors without treatment, too often dying there. 

As the constant presence in every setting during the pandemic, nursing staff went through a level of incredible trauma that isn’t captured by this report. We faced an unprecedented scale of death and saw our own colleagues die, some in the very same places they worked. I know many who isolated from their entire families to continue saving lives and their contribution and sacrifice must never be forgotten.  

And we also must not forget that many lost their careers to long COVID because of the sacrifices they made. The report is right to call for better support for health care staff at the next pandemic, but we cannot forget those left behind from the last one. Ministers must agree to formally recognise long COVID as an industrial disease and deliver proper financial support to those who can no longer work.   

But the most important legacy of this Inquiry must be that we ensure our health and care services are not devastated by the next national emergency. Lessons must be learned.  

However, the sad reality is that it will be impossible to increase capacity in hospitals while the nursing workforce remains so severely depleted. That must change. It should cause great alarm that this report finds the NHS workforce is in such a state that it may not be able to work under the conditions of another pandemic.  

We will consider what else this report means for our members. But we need fundamental progress to put nursing front and centre of the future of healthcare. To do that, governments need to listen to nursing, and they need to invest in nursing. And that needs to happen now, if we are to save lives in the future.