Nurses' mental health: 'Most people in the NHS, they are sad'
"NHS staff have run off adrenalin for the past year and that adrenalin is running out. We're all coming to the point where we're all just crashing and burning out."
Emily Moorhouse is one of thousands of NHS staff who have either left the profession or changed roles this year.
Although the Nursing and Midwifery (NMC) register shows the number of nurses, midwives and nursing associates has grown by 1.8% to just under 745,000, it also shows the number of people leaving the profession is at its highest rate since 2017 with 13,945 quitting between April and September this year.
The NMC and NHS England do not collate data on staff leaving departments so it is not easy to establish how many have left intensive care units or A&E during the pandemic.
An A&E nurse for four years, Emily has now moved to community nursing.
"I just knew that my mental health mattered more," she said.
"Sometimes you feel like you have to push on for the sake of your colleagues. It's not even like people are making you feel like that, it's just inside of you because you work as a team and you don't want to feel like you're letting your team down because you know it's going to make the situation worse if you're not there.
"It's really hard because part of you feels so guilty because you know it's only going to make it worse by you leaving. But in the same breath obviously they will employ new people and you do have to put yourself first."
She said it felt like staff and management were not being supported.
"It's all sort of just crumbling a little bit. That's what it feels like. It feels like it's collapsing. That's the best way I can describe it."
In January, Emily decided to take a three-month break.
"Afterwards, I didn't want to go back to A&E but I felt like I had something to prove to myself. Even if I was to go back and eventually move on to somewhere else - which I have done - I just felt like I needed to overcome that fear of being there again."
'I can't do this'
On her return, during an extremely busy shift, Emily realised she could not return full time to A&E.
"We were obviously understaffed - the whole NHS is understaffed at the minute which makes you sad, it really makes you sad, and you just want to help everybody in the safest way possible and you just feel like you're fighting a losing battle sometimes.
领英推荐
"You're trying your best but nothing's moving and you just feel like in a constant circle.
"It got to the point, I was on a night shift and I just cried. I just sat and I cried and I said 'I can't do this'. In my head I said this is why I'm leaving, because my mental health cannot take this any more."
Murals of NHS workers have been painted throughout the pandemic - but now staff say they are facing abuse while at work
The pressure Emily felt built during the pandemic.
"It felt like the whole world was on our shoulders. It really did feel like that.
"Witnessing people obviously really, really sick with Covid and them asking if they'd be able to see their families again and you not being able to give them an answer, that in itself was heart-breaking. It affects your mental health massively because you're the first person they're speaking to.
"PPE (personal protective equipment) had a massive affect on me because whenever I feel anxious, I focus on my breathing but when you've got masks on your face and a gown on as well, you're really hot, you feel claustrophobic, so I found that didn't help.
"I couldn't properly function any more, I was at breaking point.
"I was not able to enjoy life in general because my mind was so overloaded with everything that I couldn't fit anything else in there.
"In some ways you were giving your all at work - and you do give your all at work - you come home and you'd have nothing left for your family. I'd come home and I wouldn't even want to talk. I was just fed up of talking.
"At home after shifts I'd be lying in bed with palpitations. I'd be shaking, sweating - just all your classic anxiety, panic attack symptoms. That's when I realised I needed to stop. I needed to take care of myself and recover from what we've witnessed over the past year."
During her career break, Emily realised just how much her mental health had deteriorated.
"While I was off work I had depersonalisation badly to the point where I disassociated from myself. I'd look in the mirror and I didn't feel like it was me looking back or when I was talking it didn't feel like it was me talking. I suffered with that really, really badly."