WATCH | Doctor’s videos let medics tell it like it is

A young doctor is capturing the struggles of health workers navigating the Covid storm in Gauteng through a new YouTube series.

Kapil Narain, a 25-year-old doctor at a state facility, wants to use the series he has created, called Breathless, to help South Africans understand what his peers in the health sector are going through.

“Junior health workers are the coalface of the pandemic. In South Africa, they are often the first point of contact for examining, swabbing, treating and managing patients,” he said.

Some of their common struggles are long working hours and high patient loads.

“Most of them talk about wards being full, bed shortages, long waiting hours,” Narain said. “Oxygen and PPE [personal protective equipment] shortages are still a common theme. They really feel that they are being stretched — and being a junior doctor myself, I have to agree.”

The series began last week with an interview of a medical intern at one of Gauteng’s busiest hospitals. Subjects’ identities are kept secret so they can speak candidly.

 “Bed capacity is sitting at a maximum, people are on oxygen,” said the intern. “It’s quite hectic right now. More people are coming in with respiratory problems. Most of those in our investigation wards are testing positive. Since we are on an upward trend there is definitely going to be a need for more beds.”

A Pretoria nurse featured in the second episode said: “We should tell the story of how Covid-19 wreaked havoc in our hospitals because we see, nurse and interact with the patients daily. We carry the burden of Covid. You nurse a patient today, and tomorrow they pass on. You have to then continue to the next patient without even internalising the fact that you have just lost a patient.

“We have to deal with staff shortages most of the time and it is really difficult having to nurse more than 30 patients.”

The nurse was critical of the government and hospital management. “We are now in the third wave. This is not the first time we are dealing with Covid. With the first wave you could forgive the mistakes that were made because Covid was new to us.

“The third wave is proving even worse than the second wave. You’d assume the government would be better prepared. We are dealing with the issue of PPE even in the third wave, which is not supposed to be the case. They are really failing us as public servants, and they are really failing the public.”

She said nurses’ mental health was in “tatters” as a result of the government’s failures. “We are struggling. We don’t have time to debrief because we are under so much pressure. There is so much trauma from working in such an environment. We have to continue as normal, but we are not OK and nothing is normal.”

Narain said he wants to give young health workers a platform to voice their challenges and fears. “The public response on social media shows people are really shaken by the pandemic. We always hear and read the stories, but hearing it from the workers on the ground really puts it into perspective.”