This is the Guardian.

Today, how work is making us sick.

I think most people would say that the first year of their nursing career is really,

really hard. I remember speaking to one of my colleagues and she said my first year of nursing

was like the worst of my life. Lizzie's a nurse in Greater Manchester. She qualified in 2020,

possibly the most difficult period in the NHS's history, and she was thrown straight onto an

oncology ward, treating people who have cancer. There were no visitors allowed at that time,

and so some patients went for months without seeing their friends or family.

So I think it was the, yeah, bit of a combination of the actual

mood within the hospital, because it was quite lonely for a lot of the patients, and that's very

hard, you know, to see and to deal with, but also just the general pressure of the job

coupled with not being able to see any of your own friends, any of your own family,

that made it very, very intense.

As the months went on, Lizzie found herself struggling to cope. She couldn't stop thinking about

work when she wasn't there, but every day as she drove in, she says she felt overwhelmed with

dread. I was working a lot of night shifts. I couldn't sleep during the day. My mind would be

absolutely racing. I was living with my boyfriend at that point, and he'd be saying,

I don't think you need to think about that right now. You need to go to bed. It's, you know,

it's 12, it's 12 in a day, and you've got a night shift tonight. I don't think you should be

up and worrying and fretting and panicking, and I'd be like, no, no, no, it's fine. This is,

I don't, I kind of convinced myself it was normal, but I started to feel unwell. I started to get

migraines more and more, which I have had in the past, but they got sort of out of control.

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