{"id":431,"date":"2020-09-08T12:28:00","date_gmt":"2020-09-08T11:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/burnoutincovid\/"},"modified":"2020-09-08T12:28:00","modified_gmt":"2020-09-08T11:28:00","slug":"burnoutincovid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/burnoutincovid\/","title":{"rendered":"DAUK in The Guardian: the NHS staff broken and burned out by Covid"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In April, when the coronavirus outbreak was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2020\/jun\/19\/over-1000-deaths-day-uk-ministers-accused-downplaying-covid-19-peak\">at its peak<\/a> in the UK and tearing through hospitals, junior doctor Rebecca Thornton\u2019s mental health took a turn for the worse and she ended up having to be sectioned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Even now, three months later, she cannot face going back to her job and thinks it will take her a year to recover from some of the horrors she saw while working on a Covid ward in a deprived area of London.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIt was horrendous,\u201d Thornton recalls. \u201cIt\u2019s so harrowing to watch people die, day in, day out. Every time someone passed away, I\u2019d say, \u2018This is my fault\u2019. Eventually I stopped eating and sleeping.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Thornton\u2019s case may sound extreme but her experiences of working through Covid are far from unique. More than <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/society\/2020\/sep\/05\/more-than-1000-doctors-want-to-quit-nhs-over-handling-of-pandemic\">1,000 doctors plan to quit the NHS<\/a> over the government\u2019s handling of the pandemic, according to a recent survey [from the Doctors\u2019 Association UK], with some citing burnout as a cause<strong>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And as early as mid April, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/society\/2020\/apr\/23\/half-of-uk-health-workers-suffering-stress-because-of-covid-19\">YouGov polling<\/a> for the IPPR thinktank found that 50% of 996 healthcare workers questioned across the UK said their mental health had deteriorated since the virus started taking hold of the NHS. Meanwhile, latest <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/society\/2020\/aug\/20\/nhs-sickness-rate-record-high-coronavirus-peak-england\">sickness rate<\/a> data for NHS staff in England found that April had the highest levels of sickness absence since data was first collected in 2009. Anxiety, stress, depression or other psychiatric illnesses were the most reported reasons for absence, at 20.9%, compared with about 14% each for respiratory problems, colds and flu, and infectious diseases. Data for the months following is yet to be released.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Read the full article in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/society\/2020\/sep\/08\/i-had-to-be-sectioned-the-nhs-staff-broken-and-burned-out-by-covid\">The Guardian<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We explore the mental health impact of COVID-19 and burn out in the NHS as our survey reveals nearly half of respondents are thinking about leaving due to the impact on their personal mental health. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91,29],"tags":[111,33,34,114],"class_list":["post-431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-compassionate-culture","category-protect-the-frontline","tag-mental-health","tag-press","tag-press-covid-19","tag-the-guardian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}