A nurse from Beaumont Hospital in Dublin contacted TheLiberal.ie this morning with her harrowing, stressful and quite frankly outrageous story from the past weekend.
We phoned the nurse in question and the following is an account of her job last weekend:
“Patients not only left on stretchers, but we had them on chairs and at one point we ran out of chairs”, her voice breaking with emotion.
“I’ve been a nurse for 16 years, I have never seen a worse time in my life. I couldn’t and can’t take the stress. People shouting, screaming and we can’t cope”.
“I was working from early morning Sunday until around 8pm and I had no lunch – nothing. The stress got too much for me around 4pm, I had to leave the department and go the public toilet. I pretended to ask was there someone in there who needed help…
I went in and I cried my eyes out for 20 minutes.
People were knocking on the door to use it and it just got to me even more. I felt useless, I felt helpless. There were 60 to 70 people needing help and we had a skeleton staff with junior doctors.
I got off the seat of the toilet, washed my face and hit the department again. I did my best, we all did. I wasn’t crying because I got no lunch, I wasn’t crying over Haddington Road, I wasn’t crying over our wages being cut and more hours – I was crying because we are understaffed.”
“One of the girls comforted me in the evening, she knew I was upset. She told me that she too had cried two weeks ago from being extremely exhausted from the job. There was a little comfort in knowing I wasn’t the only one.”
“I love my job, I have always wanted to do this job and yes at times it’s incredibly difficult, but it’s what I was meant to do. We all love the job – but I fear if things don’t drastically change, not only will I leave the job, but people are going to lose their lives from mismanagement and not being seen by the appropriate people at the appropriate time.”
“I left the hospital at 10:30pm last night, and I’m back in on Tuesday to do it all again. We need help before it’s too late.”
Staff nurse, Beaumont Hospital, Dublin.
Please share this lady’s heartfelt story.