Louise Curtis: A Nurse's Story

Another lull followed. The department was already sparkling clean so there was nothing for me to tidy up. Instead, I passed the time chatting to my colleagues and was surprised by some of the things I learnt about them. Usually no one has time to breathe, let alone strike up a conversation that isn’t patient-related, so this was a rare opportunity to delve into the lives of people I spend an inordinate amount of time with, yet knew little about.

A lot of people who work in healthcare have followed the traditional path into the profession. They’ve gone to university, done training and got a job. There are others, however, who have led a completely different life before starting to work in healthcare settings. In my department, we’ve got a nurse who used to be an engineer, a few doctors who are also Olympic athletes, a builder-turned-nurse, former lawyers and military personnel, and one healthcare assistant who is a personal bodyguard for celebrities in his spare time.

Our hospital workforce has diversity in all its forms under one roof. We’ve got managers and consultants at the top of their game earning hundreds of thousands of pounds a year alongside cleaners and porters on much less. We’ve got staff members from all around the world and from every socio-economic background.

It hadn’t escaped us that most of the pictures of healthcare professionals who had died were those of people from a black and minority ethnic background. The trust had sent out messages asking anyone with worries to seek support from them. Some of my consultants had had to shield at home because coming into hospital was too risky for them.

The Black Lives Matter protests, brought about by a police officer killing George Floyd on 25 May in Minneapolis, were at the forefront of people’s minds. There have been reports published that show the higher you go up the ranks in the health service, the number of BME staff decreases.

I’m not in a position to make a change on a big scale, but I would like to be one day. The NHS needs to push for more gender and racial equality otherwise it’s shooting itself in the foot.

As my colleagues and I continued chatting, one nurse announced that she was leaving the NHS to be a fire fighter. I was surprised and sad because she had been such a fantastic colleague and nurse. I couldn’t help but feel it was a loss for our hospital because she was one of the nicest, kindest and most empathetic people I had ever met. She was amazing.

I was also happy, however. It’s so important to follow what you want to do. If nursing isn’t for you, that’s fine. There’s no point in sticking with it. I think there are a lot of people working in the healthcare profession who probably shouldn’t be. I’ve experienced as a patient nurses who have been really short tempered and who seem to have lost their compassion. When it gets to that point and you stop caring, you need to leave, but sometimes people just carry on because they don’t have enough self-awareness.

All this made me think again how long it would be before I hung up my stethoscope. A&E definitely had a shelf life and I’ve always said it’s a young person’s game. There are older people who have stuck it out for years, but the majority are young. Typically, people come, get up-skilled quickly and then move on to somewhere with a slower pace of life. A&E is fast-paced and it’s exhausting. I can maintain the lifestyle with shift work and working nights at the moment, but I can’t see myself in this role for much longer than ten more years. I am thinking about having children, and trying to juggle that alongside shift work would be difficult, particularly because I have no family in the area. There’s also the constant lure of a complete lifestyle change and I often dream of becoming a dog-walker or running a food van and going round festivals. I’d like to have time to expand on some of my hobbies and think about opening up my own cafe or exploring my creative side. The idea of not having to make life-and-death decisions under immense pressure is appealing.

The conversation then moved on to some of the horror stories from older members of staff who talked about how different hospitals were years ago. I thought back to what I’d seen and heard over my career. We’ve had patients in the hospital who have woken up in a delirious state and jumped out of windows to their death. A colleague found a nurse who had killed herself in one of the toilets on a night shift. I’d come in to work the next day and, even though no one knew her in A&E, the mood was black.

In the trust where I trained as a student nurse, there were always ghost stories. On one of my placements patients would often report seeing a boy in striped pyjamas. They’d also see a little girl stood by the window. In one of the side rooms, patients would recount being pushed down into the bed by an old lady. I didn’t want to believe them and thought it might be some kind of sleep paralysis until one of the nurses went in for a nap on a night shift and it happened to her. Patients would scream until the nurses came in and at that point, it would stop. I was terrified and couldn’t wait to finish that placement. I used to walk down the corridors with my back against the wall so I could see all around me. Whenever a patient buzzed in the middle of the night, I’d be so scared to attend them in case they told me they’d just seen a ghost.

I bet there are hundreds of similar stories in every hospital all over the world. I only know of one in my current hospital because I don’t dare ask. There is one ward that is a twenty-minute walk away from A&E. In the corridors, they have lights that switch off to save energy and then come on when they detect movement. As you near the ward there is a circular mirror to help you see what’s around the corner so you don’t crash. Some of my colleagues have seen a white figure walking across the mirror but when they turned the corner, there was no one there. I’ve not experienced it myself though!

Our collective trip down memory lane came to an end when a new patient finally arrived and everyone dispersed. The computer said that this woman had smoked some marijuana and didn’t feel well. I went in to see her and she was fast asleep, snoring. A collection of drool had pooled in the right corner of her mouth and was starting to roll down her chin. I woke her up and she looked disgusted with me.

‘I’m so sorry to wake you,’ I said.

‘I’m hungry,’ she replied.

I went off to find some food and returned with a sandwich. She gobbled it down.

‘Oh, I feel so much better,’ she said. ‘I think I can go home now.’

I have had extensive medical training and none of it was needed for this patient. It had taken a sandwich to fix her. We get these cases from time to time. People come in drunk or high and sometimes sitting them up and giving them a coffee and something to eat works a treat. I discharged her and it wasn’t long after that it was time to go home. It had been an odd night shift.

The next time I was in was over the weekend. My shift blurred into an amalgamation of patients who had attempted suicide and those who were victims of domestic violence. We were now in mid-June and the influx of domestic abuse survivors was getting worse as restrictions had eased. They were coming to A&E because, in some cases, they felt there was nowhere else to go even though services were still running. Not everyone knew what was available or how to get in touch with the right people. A&E is always open and the first place many people think of. I’d read that calls to the UK’s national domestic helpline had reportedly risen by 66 per cent during lockdown and visits to its website increased by 950 per cent. Demand for beds in refuges had rocketed. Spaces were usually found but sometimes, we had to admit people overnight until one became available.