Read the story of a nurse, who started their new role on ICU at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham, on the day the UK went into the first lockdown, and the effects it has had on her and her colleagues.

“With the news of my wedding cancelled at just four days notice due to Coronavirus, I phoned my manager in ICU and told them I could start my new job three weeks earlier - 23 March, the day the UK went into lockdown. My husband-to-be asking in the background if this was a good idea… “It will be good to take my mind off things” I tell him. Understatement of the century.

From the minute I walked onto the unit there was a buzz of anticipation, nervousness, dread, all with an overwhelming sense of cohesiveness and teamwork. On my part maybe some naivety to add to the mix. Despite all these emotions and having to get the unit ready to become a COVID unit, everyone was so welcoming and helpful that I knew I would be ok. Very quickly we were swarming with the sickest patients I had ever laid my eyes on and the naivety dissipated as I began to understand the extent of just how much I needed to learn, and how quickly I needed to do it. This took ‘learning on the job’ to a new extreme, not just for me but for many experienced ITU nurses who readily admitted they had also never cared for such sick patients, or so many at one time. But with this came a sense of togetherness - we were all rapidly consumed by exhaustion, sorrow for our patients and their loved ones, and fear of catching the virus or passing it onto our families - but we were all in it together.

Before I knew it, we had somehow come through the first wave, although sadly the same could not be said for some of my patients, and after the adrenaline of the first wave started to peter out, some nurses left either to sickness, retire early, or leave the profession altogether. There started to be reports of healthcare professionals experiencing PTSD. Whilst I felt the utmost sympathy for those staff members, I could not empathise. I would be ok, I kept telling myself. How wrong I was.

A second, less destructive but equally exhausting wave hit in the autumn. We held on tightly and mourned yet more patients. But then the nightmares began, the vivid images and sleepless nights. With the third wave looming, nobody could quite believe we would have to go through it again and many understandably could not. This time I could empathise. My coping strategy: tell myself it could not possibly be as bad as the first wave.

We are still reeling from the third, most savage wave however. There is not a healthcare professional at this point that can say they are unaffected by what they have seen over the past year. In fact, many will tell you they are crippled by it both physically and emotionally. Covid struck a nerve for healthcare professionals because it went against everything we knew. Suddenly we were firefighting - just trying to keep patients alive because that is all we could do under the circumstances.

Many staff make jokes out of the fact I have remained in ITU having started when I did. I suppose when I reflect on it, I am quite amazed too, but how could I leave the team that have been through so much together? We have grieved together for patients we never saw awake and for families we only ever heard over the phone. We have learnt to recognise each other’s calling cry just by looking into each other’s mask-surrounded eyes. We have held each other’s hands in the same way we held countless peoples’ hands as they died. We have been each other’s families when we could not see our own.

As I reflect on the past year, I reflect on a year of loss, grief, and hope. Whilst some will devastatingly be able to say they felt it all too tangibly, others cannot deny that. Even if they have not lost a loved one, they have lost or grieved something else - the loss of a job they loved, a long-distance friendship that has faded through no fault of its own, the inability to be at the birth for their partner. But after loss comes hope and that is something, we can all hold onto now.”

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