H&C Themes: Experiences of providing care

Health and Care Matters

In-depth: My experiences of providing care

In 2021, around 700 people across Britain took part in online conversations to talk about their experiences of health and care. Here’s what people working (paid and unpaid) in health or care said about their experiences.

Staff and carers feel overstretched, undervalued and taken for granted
Health and care staff need more time to do their jobs justice
Carers shared having to go into debt and staff shared concerns about pay
Staff and carers are negatively affected by disjoints and gaps in the systems.

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The experiences of people who work in health or care, or provide unpaid care

“People delivering health and care are doing their best”

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Jim

“You’ve only got a certain amount of time and something has to give, and you don’t want to compromise your care of patients. But how do you fit everything into that time, when each year you’re being asked to do more and more within that short amount of time? And…read more

Yvonne

“If I could change one thing? As we are all aware, most of our shifts are 12 hour shifts. A happy worker produces good results. As healthcare people, I believe we really need salary increments. What we are getting is not really good, to be honest, considering what we went through…read more

Sherrie

“When I was a carer, and my husband sadly died a few years back, I found respite was non-existent. Previously, it was there. Not much, but it was there. But non-existent at the end, when I twice needed major surgery. There just wasn’t any help.”

“I see and hear unkindness probably on a daily basis”

Christina

“I always felt that it was okay for us to phone the team. The team could phone us, we could talk, ask questions. We could say ‘Look, we don’t understand how this works.’ We could say ‘Look, we don’t think this bit of it is working well. Who can we…read more

Ada

“I’m a student nurse, so I’m between various boards at the moment. But they’re always understaffed. There’s not been a ward I’ve been on that’s not been understaffed at times. And it does impact patient care. If you don’t have enough staff, you don’t have enough people to go around…read more

Get involved

Do you have something to say on this topic? There’s a number of ways you can get involved, from submitting quick 2 minute answers to sharing your story on video.

“I would like to feel that my son would never, ever have to be so conflicted”

Read Allie’s story

You may also be interested in these themes

I think services are too stretched

I’m grateful for the care I’ve had

I didn’t know where to turn

I didn’t get the support I needed

image of young lady looking out of window

We share people’s experiences because we want people making decisions to hear from people who live with those decisions every day. But we know some of this experiential content can be difficult to watch. If you’ve been affected by anything you’ve seen, heard or read here please consider getting in touch with these organisations that can help.

To help preserve people’s anonymity, real names haven’t been used on quotes.