Government may have left it ‘too late’ to protect the NHS against Omicron wave, says nursing chief
The head of the Royal College of Nursing warned this morning that the government may have left it “too late” to protect the NHS against the Omicron wave unless it heeds the advice of scientific experts on tighter restrictions.
Pat Cullen told BBC Breakfast that ministers would find it easier to make decisions on how to defend the health service if they “walk in the shoes of any nurse” for a day.
“We need to listen to the wonderful scientific experts that we have throughout the country.”
Pat Cullen
“We listened to them yesterday evening and many evenings on TV and what (they are) saying that something needs to happen in terms of perhaps a circuit breaker, and that if we leave it much longer unfortunately our nurses fear it will be a little bit too late for the health service.”
She added: “What I would also say and what our nurses would say is walk in the shoes of any nurse any day for a 12-hour shift, and I think those decisions would become very easy for people if they did, particularly our political leaders.”
‘Depleted workforce’
Cullen also told BBC Breakfast that NHS staff are struggling with a “very, very depleted workforce” and want ministers to take action which enables them to care for patients safely.
“Nurses and other healthcare workers are quite ill from the spin-off with Covid, and continue to be simply because their internal and personal resources are low going into this because of the number of hours that they’re working and the shifts they’ve been working on a very, very depleted workforce working in a fragile service leading up to this current wave,” she said.
“They would like to see political leaders making decisions that will support the health service and them to be able to do the job that they want to do and be able to care for their patients safely.
“If that means tighter measures, that’s for political leaders to decide based on the scientific evidence.”