60,000 NHS workers living with PTS after battling pandemic

Around 60,000 NHS staff members have post-traumatic stress after working through the Covid-19 pandemic, new research suggests.

Nine out of 10 health workers say it will take them years to recover from the ordeal and one in four had lost a colleague to coronavirus, according to NHS Charities Together

The charity, NHS staff and mental health experts are now calling for more support from the health service and UK government to support those struggling in the aftermath of the pandemic.

“I think it’s quite clear there hasn’t been enough support to help NHS workers recover from their experiences during the pandemic. As a result, a lot of people are feeling incredibly jaded,” said Dr Ed Patrick, an NHS anaesthetist who worked in a Covid-19 intensive care unit from the beginning of the pandemic.

On his experiences of working on the front lines of the health service, Dr Patrick said: “Like everyone else in the world, we lost our outlets for release. Everything was shut down and for NHS workers, our lives just became the hospital."

He described the long and gruelling hours and the emotional burden of working at the height of the pandemic: “We all had an overwhelming feeling of powerlessness. There was also a deep sadness because everything you would normally do to help patients just wasn’t working.

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Source: The Independent, 17 May 2022