Just a conversation between friends about nothing new

As we enter another New Year, what a start we have encountered. A&E departments and hospitals overwhelmed with ambulances still queuing outside, unprecedented strike action, COVID-19 still hanging around (although we seem to go through the same crisis in A&E every winter despite and before COVID-19) and crisis management in community services.

Bleak, very bleak.

Have you ever sat with your mug of coffee, watching all of the above on the breakfast news and felt sad, angry, frustrated, disappointed or helpless? I was having another one of those (seemingly now, daily) moments this week prior to meeting up with two very good nursing friends of mine for our New Year get-together. I primed them in advance that I wanted to get their take on the current state of play in community healthcare services in preparation for my writing this editorial piece. As you may imagine, once we started talking we carried on for a few hours; there is so much to discuss at the moment and far too much to write about here. I need to tell you that my colleagues are both ‘long in the tooth’ district nurses — one an educationalist and the other, a senior operations manager—and both are currently in the thick of it, just like many of you reading this.