Shocking Covid-19 stories published on request

More than 32,000 people contributed to the Every Story Matters report, which is intended to help the chair of the UK Covid-19 Inquiry, Baroness Heather Hallett, draw conclusions and make recommendations for dealing with future pandemics.

The document will be published on Monday. It is the result of the most comprehensive public participation study ever conducted as part of a British investigation.

“Every Story Matters” continues to accept submissions on a wide variety of topics.

The recording includes the experiences of healthcare professionals and patients in primary care and hospitals, as well as in emergency and urgent care, end-of-life care, obstetric care, protective measures and Long Covid.

It explains how some patients found accessing healthcare during the pandemic very difficult and stressful, how families faced major challenges in caring for their loved ones at the end of life, and how health workers found planning for the pandemic inadequate and the response too slow.

The document also includes details from 604 in-depth interviews conducted with people working in the healthcare sector.

Ben Connah, Secretary of the UK Covid-19 Inquiry, said: “In this, our first published report, we bring together thousands of experiences that illustrate the impact of the pandemic on patients, their families, healthcare systems and facilities and the people who work in them.

“It’s a tough read in places – but it really does illustrate how people have experienced our health care system during these pandemic years…

“I would encourage anyone who has a story to share it with us. For more information visit everystorymatters.co.uk.”

Some authors of the protocol said that senior physicians made end-of-life decisions in part to spare their junior colleagues the work.

One said of young doctors: ‘They were surrounded by dying people, more than one patient a day, and when the patients died they often felt uncomfortable and seemed distressed.

“When you don’t have that trust, that certainty, and everything is a bit new to you and you’re surrounded by chaos, suffering and death, then I think it’s a lot more stressful.”

End-of-life care often also includes hospital staff being with dying patients when their relatives are unable to do so.

“Nobody wants anyone to die alone, and as nurses we try our hardest to make sure that doesn’t happen,” said one nurse.

“When family members can’t be there, you are there. You are just there. You just do it.”

A nursing assistant said they held the hands of a dying patient while his family watched through a window.

Another staff member said, “We try to provide quality care to families, and even if I can wake a patient up for two hours so they can have a coherent conversation with their loved ones, that’s a win because that’s precious.”

“And you know, when they die, we can make that death as dignified and as un-horrible as possible, even though we know it’s going to be horrible, and if we can just soften some of the bitter parts, it’s still going to be bad.”

A hospital doctor reported having to tell a patient with a bowel perforation over the telephone that he was going to die because he could not be offered surgery.

This was because the surgery was moderately high risk and was considered riskier due to Covid-19.

“At the time, the evidence suggested that surgery on people was not particularly safe, especially if they had Covid,” they said.

“This meant that we were offering far fewer operations to people who at other times would have been offered surgery, emergency surgery to fix something catastrophic, such as a bowel perforation, which we would normally do without thinking twice.

“And we knew that people would die as a result, and that was of course very hard.”

The document also revealed that some medical professionals believed that the Nightingale hospitals set up to treat patients were wasting their resources.

One said: ‘We have set up huge Nightingale hospitals with intensive care capacity, but these have been under-utilised, probably due to a lack of well-trained staff or a need for intensive care places.

“With a little lateral thinking, these could have been used for less intensive care, such as in elderly care, for rehabilitation beds or Covid+ interim care beds, to free up hospital beds for patients who need them.”

Some NHS employees also explained during the investigation how stressful the reassignment from their usual role had been.

One physiotherapist said: “When it came to redeployment, we were actually deployed as intensive care nurses – we had not been told this before our shifts began – and with all the responsibilities that came with that. We had no training – as there were too many patients – and were asked to do 12.5-hour shifts.

“We were happy to take all of this on because we knew it was a challenging time.”