Let’s pretend you work in an office. Let’s say you are an administrator. Your only task this morning is to send some emails. It’s a simple job, one you do every day at work. Shouldn’t take long right? An easy day at the office! Your boss informs you that you are a little short staffed today, but if you all chip in to share the extra work it won’t cause too many problems. So you go to your desk and you get started.

Now imagine that as you try and send each email you get called from your desk to help a colleague. Not with complicated issues, just simple things such as replacing the toner in the photocopier or working the scanner. Each of these takes a few minutes, and you are happy to help – after all, you just have a few emails to do.

Let’s pretend that there is also a doorbell ringing every 5-10 minutes. This signifies someone needing your help, and again you have to leave your desk each time. The doorbell often implies a slightly longer enquiry or need, and assisting them often requires more help than you can provide single handed. Because everyone has their own emails to send it can take a few minutes to gather extra hands to help, but of course this is your job – you want to help, and you do this with a smile.

Let’s pretend you have now been at work for 3.5 hours. You have not yet finished your emails, neither have you had a sip of water or a chance to go to the toilet. It is time for your first break. You are still answering the phone and the doorbell, still helping your colleagues with their tasks, and now you need to handover your tasks to a colleague before you can go. This takes a while, but you know that if you help your colleague with her tasks first she can then manage your desk while you take your break. You’re starving! The whole morning has run late – as it always does – and as a result you are late going for your break. This means the next person will go late, and the person after that. Your boss will not be happy. You will probably just take 20 minutes instead of your allotted 30, for which you do not get paid.

Let’s pretend you have finished your lunch (sandwich and an apple brought in from home – you can’t afford nice hot lunches) and go back to your colleague. You now have to manage her desk as well as your own so that she can have her lunch. As you stand at your desk – oh yes, didn’t I mention? You don’t have a chair, you are on your feet all day – your boss now wants to know why you haven’t yet sent those emails. You try and explain that you keep getting interrupted and are short-staffed, but you know that those emails really need sending. You feel guilty and strive to work even harder.

Let’s imagine you are able to get a few sent over the next hour. But then a colleague alerts you that there is a big problem in the next room and you are needed immediately. The problem is pretty complicated and needs expert help, and fast. You do your best to help the team with this problem, frustrated that you can’t do more, but also conscious that you still haven’t finished your work.

Before you know it, another 5 hours have passed. You’re exhausted and you really need a drink and a rest. Again you must find your colleague to ask her to cover your desk before you take your break.  You are grateful that you can rest your feet, and you take this peaceful opportunity to start writing your notes – you must record all your actions so that the person taking over knows what work you have completed and what is outstanding. You feel bad that you may not get through your original list of emails today, and the night staff may have lots of extra work, but you still have a couple of hours left to try and complete all your tasks. You work while you eat.

It is the end of the day and your boss is back for an update. You still haven’t finished your notes, and now the night team are here to take over and you STILL haven’t finished sending those emails! And you just remember a job that needed doing hours ago! You stay late to finish your tasks, knowing that when you come back in the morning there will be just as many jobs to do. You will not get paid for staying late, nor will you be able to claim the time back. Your feet are screaming, your back aches, you are hungry and exhausted. Your take-home pay for this 12.5 hour day is just over £100

Now, let’s pretend that you don’t work in an office, but a hospital. You are not an administrator but a nurse. Instead of a desk you have a bay of 6 or 7 patients. Your emails are actually medication rounds, bed-baths and taking patient’s blood pressures. Answering doorbells (patient buzzers) implies people requiring assistance, needing more pain killers, someone feeling unwell. Instead of changing the toner, it’s finding a thermometer that works. Giving a strong pain killer needs 2 nurses to check, sign and administer. Answering the phone may take 20 minutes to update a relative, maybe with bad news, something that cannot be rushed. The ‘big problem’ was actually an emergency call for an extremely sick patient who required immediate assistance. Perhaps a cardiac arrest call. Perhaps the patient died, and you are expected to carry on with your day like you are unaffected, and go back to your bay of patients with a smile on your face.

This is every day in the NHS. 7 days a week, wards are understaffed (which will only get worse with our recent ‘Brexit’), and nurses regularly feel defeated by their impossible workload. They are often forced to work overtime to pay bills as the NHS has not received a pay rise in line with inflation in years. The last 1% pay rise resulted in a hike in NI contributions, which actually saw most healthcare workers worse off. Amidst all this, you have one junior doctor assigned to look after 4 bays of patients (about 28-30 in total) who also rarely get breaks, often feel out of their depth and unsupported, always (without fail) go home late.

This article is not to say that other people don’t work hard. Of course you do, we all do. But the aim is to demonstrate the constant, consistent struggle and strain, the emotional burden, of working in the NHS. This is why doctors are striking; there are physically not enough people to do the job expected of us. And there will be more cuts. Governors put holds on hiring agency nurses (they are too expensive) so the permanent staff members must undertake 2 people’s workload. Eventually they will get sick, hurt themselves, hurt someone else or break under the stress. We lose another nurse.

These are unacceptable working conditions! And unacceptable patient conditions! When you are admitted to hospital, you want the assurance that the staff are capable of tending to your specific needs. You want to know staff have the time and capacity to give you the best healthcare possible. This should not even be questioned. And yet we are more aware than ever of the amount of ‘near-misses’, the ‘what-ifs’. And believe me, it’s not because we don’t care. It’s not because we’re lazy. It is simply impossible.

We cry. We empathise. We want to help. We want to do better. Help us help you. Save our NHS.