Nurse Rebekah Fox’s harrowing five-year work diary exposes NSW hospital crisis

Crying in the tea room, abuse from patients upset by cancelled surgeries, enforced overtime - the five-year diary of nurse Rebekah Fox paints a confronting picture of life inside NSW’s hospital crisis.

Crying in the tea room, copping abuse from patients upset by cancelled surgeries, enforced overtime - the five-year diary of NSW nurse Rebekah Fox paints a harrowing picture of life inside the state’s hospital wards.

The 29-year-old registered nurse started penning her frustrations at the job during the height of the Covid pandemic, yet four years on there’s little improvement - so this week she mailed all her diary entries to Premier Chris Minns.

The NSW Nurses and Midwives Association member hopes the confronting details will “make people put themselves in our shoes”.

“We join this profession because we want to care for people, but we are put in situations where our soft hearts are being taken advantage of by the system,” she told the Telegraph.

“I just want to show people, and politicians, the things that we do every day, because I don’t think it’s really understood.”

In a diary that spans five years NSW nurse Rebekah Fox paints a harrowing picture of life inside the state’s hospital wards.

Ms Fox started working in NSW in 2020, after completing her new graduate year in Queensland. The pay was lower in NSW than in Queensland, but rent, fuel and living costs were more expensive.

She was more experienced in NSW than when she was working in QLD, but her pay was thousands less per year.

The pandemic had started – and the next year was one of the most difficult in her career.

Her first of many entries detailing “enforced overtime” came in April 2021. She recalled her manager chasing her and her colleagues down the hallway after their shift had ended.

“He asks us to stop,” she wrote.

“The hospital nurse manager is coming to see us. Apparently someone has to stay and do overtime, the afternoon shift is short again. It’s 3:35 now and two men, our managers, are blocking the hallway, they’re calling it ‘enforced overtime’.”

A couple of weeks later, her diary tells a similar story. Ms Fox wrote that she and her colleagues were unable to leave the break room until someone agreed to do overtime.

“None of my colleagues or I could do overtime today so we were locked in the tea room until someone changed their mind,” she wrote.

“One nurse was recovering from tonsillitis and should have stayed home in the first place, one’s pregnant and exhausted. I have done three 15 hour overtime shifts this week already.”

Two weeks later three of her patients had their surgeries cancelled due to staffing issues.

“My 90-year-old patient’s hip surgery was cancelled today for the fifth day in a row. Our

theatres are understaffed,” she wrote in May 2021.

“I showed her family how to make a formal complaint. The aggressive man in bed 10 had his knee surgery cancelled as well.

“He yelled at me when I delivered the news, but I’m used to that. The young lady with the infected cat bite had her surgery cancelled for the third day in a row, our theatres are still understaffed.”

Ms Fox told the Telegraph that in 2021 she was doing so much overtime she didn’t have the capacity to do much more than sleep on the days she did have off.

“I remember being exhausted all the time, and it became really isolating” she said.

“Every shift there was a request for overtime and we were made to feel guilty if we didn’t do it.”

The last entries in NSW nurse Rebekah Fox’s work diary focus on NSW Premier Chris Minns (pictured) and the recent nurses’ 24-hour statewide strike. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Nikki Short

In July 2021 – she wrote her shortest entry: “I can’t do this anymore. I got another job.”

Ms Fox said her decision to relocate to another hospital was fuelled by feeling unsafe at work.

“We would work in pairs at the hospital, and it was getting to the point where it was common to be looking after 10 to 14 patients between the two of us,” she said.

According to NSW Health safe staffing levels, registered nurses should not be looking after more than a maximum of five patients at a time. However, the ratio varies from one-on-one to five on one care depending on the level of assistance needed.

Her last day at that hospital was on August 14, 2021 – she remembers it because it was the day her grandfather died.

Instead of condolences, she claims her boss denied her requests to leave and be with her family.

“I’m in the lunch room crying when my boss walks in,” her diary reads.

“He asks me how close of a family member he was, and if he wasn’t that close, would I mind just staying till the end of the shift? I mind.

Nurse Rebekah Fox, pictured out the front of John Hunter Hospital, says NSW nurses are being taken advantage of by the system. Photographer: Adam yip

“My buddy nurse tells me to just walk out. She’ll care for our 12 patients alone, it’s not a safe patient load, but “I’m used to it” she says. “Go be with your family”.”

While her next role at a larger, more metropolitan hospital is “much safer” Ms Fox said they are still facing the same major issue: understaffing.

“One nurse that I know had her boss wrap his sweaty arm around her neck in a headlock and turn her around in the hallway,” one of her recent entries reads.

“‘It’s your turn to do some overtime’, he said, marching her back to the ward.”

While her initial entries were penned to former NSW premiers Gladys Berejiklian and Dominic Perrottet, the last are for the state’s current premier and focus on the nurses’ 24-hour statewide strike last month.

In her last entry earlier this month, Ms Fox told Mr Minns she was grateful his government had agreed to negotiate - yet angry still by the conditions she and her colleagues are forced to endure, the conditions sick, vulnerable patients have no choice but to face.

A NSW Government spokesperson said the nurse’s diary excerpts were “disturbing”.

“We encourage incidents like this to be reported because there’s no place or tolerance for them,” the spokesperson said. “... Staffing our hospitals is the single biggest challenge we face in the healthcare system.

“Every effort is taken to minimise overtime for all our staff to support their wellbeing, allow time for rest and ensure a safe working environment.”

Originally published as Nurse Rebekah Fox’s harrowing five-year work diary exposes NSW hospital crisis