Nurses who contracted long Covid during the pandemic and subsequently left their jobs have been let down and made to feel ‘disposable’ by NHS management, the UK Covid-19 Inquiry has been told.
Patricia Temple was a Band 5 staff nurse working on a cardiac care unit during the pandemic when she believes she caught a severe case of Covid and subsequently developed long Covid.
Giving evidence to the UK Covid-19 Inquiry this week, Ms Temple said more work was needed to better support nurses with long Covid to stay in the workforce.
She believes managers were initially ‘caught unaware’ by having nurses absent with long Covid and said a more ‘robust system’ is needed to support nurses at home when they develop the condition.
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The inquiry heard how Ms Temple was herself admitted to hospital in an ambulance after isolating at home with Covid-19 during 2020.
‘I was of the firm belief that we were told that you had to isolate at home for 10 days, that whatever you did please not to go to hospital, because it would further confound the problems that they were having at the hospital.
‘So, I stayed at home for an exceptionally long time,’ she said.
After a visit from a respiratory physiotherapist and having consulted other physicians, Ms Temple later learnt that she had permanent lung damage and was unable to return to her previous nursing role due to her long Covid symptoms.
She ultimately took ill-health dismissal in September 2023 and no longer delivers ‘bedside nursing’ but supports nursing students with their academic work online.
Ms Temple shared her concern for other nurses who contracted long Covid, especially those at the start of their careers.
‘There are a lot of nurses out there that are at the beginning of their careers and have had to take dismissal due to ill health,’ she told the inquiry.
‘That makes me feel that they [NHS management] consider nurses disposable, and I think that’s where they let us down, particularly.’
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Lessons to be learnt
Ms Temple urged lessons to be learnt from the pandemic, warning more could be done to support nurses with long Covid to remain in the profession.
‘I have a lot of nurses that I know who are trying very, very hard to stay in the workplace and are unable to do so, and that’s something that I think should be seriously looked at and learned from, so that they are a valuable resource,’ she said.
‘They’re not disposable. Having Covid and long Covid – you can’t be clapped for one minute and declared disposable the next.’
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The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has this week announced plans to create a world-first ‘early warning system’ to monitor the threat of future pandemics.
The system will be developed through a new partnership between the government, Genomics England, UK Biobank, NHS England, and Oxford Nanopore, a UK-headquartered life sciences company.
Also in the inquiry session on Monday, Rose Gallagher, professional lead for infection prevention and control at the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), said the union was pushing for long Covid to be recognised as an occupational disease.
