This is The Guardian.

I'm down for a 12 and a half hour shift and I have slept poorly. I get dressed and

drive to work. I don't have time for breakfast. It's still dark and there is no traffic to

contend with, but I feel as if I could not offer any moment. I arrive at the hospital,

a large regional hospital in the east of England and put on my uniform, a shapeless blue

polycotton tunic with ill-fitting trousers and a pair of old running shoes. I walk onto

the ward at 7am to find the night team still busily rushing around. The night has been terrible,

they say. Patients have been up and down constantly. I glance at the staffing board. The

ortho-juriatric ward for elderly people with fractures has a capacity of 28 patients spread

across bays and side rooms. For staffing purposes, the ward is split into two roughly equal

halves. On my half of the ward there is a nurse and two healthcare assistants. I'm one

of them, to help with basic patient care. I feel the tension in my shoulders dissipates

slightly as I see that I'm due to work with a friendly and capable colleague. And I feel

today might not be as bad as yesterday. No sooner has this thought formed, however, than

her name is crossed off the board. She's being moved to another ward, which is even more

short staff than ours. We take hand over from the exhausted night team,

jotting down basic information about each patient and begin our shift. The ward I'm on

is supposed to be for people with broken bones, but we have had to take several neurological

patients after one of the neuro wards was closed due to a COVID outbreak. Several of these

patients have survived brain hemorrhages, but sustained damage to the part of the brain

responsible for motor coordination. This means that they are prone to losing their balance

and falling. Another of these patients has dementia, and wonders around the ward, talking

...