The past 18 months have been intense and traumatic for everyone – and no profession has been affected more than nursing. Here is the inside story of a dreadful, dramatic time
It was the late May bank holiday of this year and Charlotte Hudd was supposed to be on a shift at the care home where she worked on the Isle of Wight. Instead, she was being wheeled from an ambulance into the A&E department at St Mary’s hospital in Newport, the island’s county town, still wearing her nurse’s uniform.
Hudd had been worried about her job affecting her health for a while. Since catching Covid at work in January 2021, she had come to dread mornings when she would wake up feeling like “there was an elephant sitting on my chest”. There were heart palpitations, breathlessness, fatigue and a terrifying brain fog – an unwelcome window into what it must be like to have early onset dementia. It was worse on work days, anxiety adding to the mix.
