I knew early on that the romantic vision I had of nursing would meet with the harsh reality of the job itself, and that I didn’t really have it in me; though I often wonder if I might retrain one day.
Over 400 pages, it sets out in raw and often depressing detail the battle nurses are fighting against poor care, failing resources and little to no support from managers in the health service.
But shocking doesn’t quite cover it, because the voices of nurses contained in the report are angry too. They’re miserable, depressed – many write that they have already or intend to leave the profession because they simply cannot continue to look patients in the eye – but they’re also furious.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting knows this only too well. He’s heard many of these stories before and has admitted he feels “ashamed” at the way the NHS fails most winters, buckling under the pressure of flu and norovirus.
In one anonymous account a nurse describes a patient dying because the hospital could not provide the right care at the right time: “This morning staff left in tears as we had a cardiac arrest in a corridor where we couldn’t move the bed to the resus area as there were other patients on beds blocking access. Sadly this lady died. Staff are trying so hard to deliver the best care possible in the most challenging of circumstances but they are all broken and I can’t tell my team that it is going to get better…”
The NHS has given its most ominous warning yet
Read MoreWhen Streeting promised to fix waiting lists he was praised for his ambition and for being willing to admit that people are becoming more unwell as a result of not being seen quickly. But Dr Tim Cooksley, a former president of the Society for Acute Medicine, warned Streeting it was “immoral and deluded” to focus on ringfencing elective surgery beds to cut the backlog without doing something to stop the crisis in A&E and, crucially, tackle social care.
On Thursday Casey was revealed to be conducting a three-month review into grooming gangs before she begins this crucial work on care. Department of Health insiders say there will be no delay; others fear her attention will be divided between two of the biggest and most important questions we currently face. This is a tussle social care cannot afford to lose.
They are telling us – and the Health Secretary – that they have had enough. They join many others in warning that solving the social care problem quickly is the only way to fix hospitals, where older people are dying an undignified and lonely death because they have nowhere else to go. Will he listen?
Kate McCann is political editor at Times Radio
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