“It is always hectic in the trauma ward, but what happened during the peak of the pandemic will always stick with me … We kept getting patients who were already dead,” says Thandekile Ndika, a nurse at Gugulethu Community Health Centre’s trauma ward.

A 2020 study of 7,607 health-care professionals by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) found that 24% nurses were experiencing severe levels of psychological distress, greater than that experienced by other health professionals. Nurses in the public sector were slightly more likely to experience severe distress than colleagues in the private sector.

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