“Un-sung, Underpaid and Overworked”
From lockdowns, new variants, mandates and masks. How have the ones fighting on the front lines fared and just how much weight do they carry on their backs.
With restrictions lifting, vaccine mandates coming to a close and borders beginning to re-open once again we may be welcomed with a rare opportunity to take a look back over the past few years and reflect. An area where the impact of Covid-19 has been felt the most is the public health sector. The heroes that we often forget are there, until we need them most. Interviewing Rebecca a senior nurse at from Waikato Hospital it was described to me just how much pressure they currently face in today’s climate.
All DHB’s, Waikato included, have been bashed by wave after wave of new variants and patient transfers. As one of the major trauma centres they must also find balance in Covid patients along with varying levels of patient sickness as well as emergency admissions that can happen at any moment. Speaking to Rebecca has painted quite the image of just the kind of stresses they are under as a major trauma centre.
In what she described as a “global shortage of Nurses”, the rate of Nurse resignations in favour of better working conditions, better pay rates and “quite simply being too exhausted” is climbing. According to AUT, (“The great resignation”) we can expect to see upwards of 30% resignation rates in the sector. Prompted now by the borders re-opening they are leaving in droves to either seek permanent or temporary job offers, majority of which, in Australia. Leaving an already under-prepared NZ health sector even more outnumbered in a world where numbers are all the public can expect to hear from government announcements.
“It’s put a huge amount of pressure on an already highly stressful working environment and covid has just amplified that. It’s the whole idea of not knowing”.
The name of the game is “becoming more reactive and agile”. With the nature of hospitals often being fast-paced, nursing and medical staff have to, at times walk a tight-rope through wards, navigating patients of varying sickness level. Coming in and out of lockdowns, staff and patients having to isolate, new updates from the ministry and amongst all of this clutter, the human connection and the struggle of not knowing when you’ll be able to see your family.
Rebecca says fatigue is high and staff have gone beyond the point of exhaustion, but those who remain stay optimistic. Amongst all the daily cases and on-going admissions they remain strong and continue to provide care for patients in ways they may never have known they’d need. There is light at the end of the tunnel but the catch-up could take a decade. In addition to Covid cases, there are other patients who have been longing and waiting to be treated. NewsHub claims upwards of 10,000 kiwis have been put onto waiting lists as alert levels and isolations occur putting hospital’s on even more of a backfoot than they likely could have ever imagined.
It is nothing short of awe-inspiring how nursing and medical staff have kept faith in themselves and in each other and Aotearoa as a whole owes a great debt of gratitude to them for that.
