‘I feel like I could work to death’: Hong Kong’s weary nurses share tales amid peak flu season surge and hospital chaos
- City’s ‘angels in white’ turn to blogging as an outlet, but also recall why they signed up to serve and how they are bent on soldiering on
- Hong Kong public hospitals are facing a serious manpower shortage and lack of ward space
As Hong Kong’s public hospitals reel from the flu season crisis, overburdened nurses are taking to social media to vent their frustration, but also to share positive tales and remind themselves amid the thankless chaos why they took on the task of caring for the sick.
Lupita (not her real name), 39, has seen it all in her nine years working in emergency wards – from heart attack patients to those suffering from paralysis, as well as some who are so sick they keep vomiting. She has also fielded complaints from agitated people caught up in snaking queues for a consultation.
Throughout her 17-year career, she has barely been around family members during Lunar New Year, one of the busiest times in hospitals.
“Being a nurse means you sometimes regret time missed with your loved ones,” she says on condition of anonymity.
Her story, written on her blog “HK Little Nurse”, has been shared by some 25,000 nurses working in more than 40 public clinics in Hong Kong.
“I felt isolated from the world, and I just needed an outlet,” says Lupita, who started blogging in 1999 while interning at a hospital as a nursing school student. She has 11,000 followers.
