As an emergency nurse I was convinced that we would have been pretty prepared and ready for the opening up, it’s not like the government didn’t had 2 years to plan for it, and we have seen the massive impacts across other countries’ health system, how did we not prevent this,  I must be giving them too much credit.

The “Let it Rip” strategy was a massive failure and an act of neglect for the people of NSW and NSW health. To defy and dismiss health advice regarding masks just weeks before Christmas must be considered criminal. In the last weeks of December and first week of January this year our unit lost 1/5 nurses to COVID, within a matter of days we had huge skilled staffing shortages in Emergency. It was correctly predicted that we would see close to 180-200 presentations a day over this period, our normal is about 120, but to try and handle that amount of extra patients  with casuals, unorientated staff and working short in the highest acuity unit in the hospital, we even lost 1 of our educators to COVID and the other dragged to the floor every day, this was all extremely exhausting.

COVID has made everything so much harder, how it has got into nursing homes to this degree disgusts me. Patients with dementia and delirium in ED who are positive are so hard to manage, we had one patient fall in their isolation room and we had no way to stop it. Orthopaedic patients with serious lacerations delayed to be reviewed or operated on for hours because they were all positive. A mental health ward refused to expand into their newly built (3yrs ago) 24 bed ward to take the swell of stressed and COVID-positive patients, wild. Voluntary Mental Health Ward closed causing massive bed block issues in our Emergency department… not a ideal place for anyone long staying.

Our bed block is becoming overwhelming now due to COVID, and that’s not because of patients infected it’s because Staff are. Large parts of the hospital cannot open beds due to unsafe staffing levels. A “capacity crisis” is called every day but nothing changes. Most morning shifts we are lucky to be allocated 1 bed in the entire hospital after people have been stuck there for over 60 hours in ED. ED overcrowding kills. I am sick of because it was all preventable.

The failures to predict, or just act on the idea that people would swamp testing centres immediately after letting COVID run free in the community just shows incompetence. I feel sympathy for my managers for not being given resources to fend off this tide of people, families, children, workers, travellers all seeking swabs around New Years and then proceeding into a pseudo lockdown for them for an unclear time was just mind boggling. Was it 14 days?, 10 days?, 7 days plus 3 with a RAT test…. What a nightmare.

Only positive was that most of the people responsible for these failings were off on leave, and we didn’t have to speak to them, because they don’t have the answers, the staff on the floor have the solutions to this mess and should be respected and listened to. Perrotet and co all need to go #letitripfailed