TalkToUs—a telephone support line for community nurses

The Queen's Nursing Institute (QNI) has always offered a range of support to community nurses. Last year, the charity expanded this support with a new listening service for all registered nurses working in the community and social care. The TalkToUs telephone listening service was set up in the first weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, in the recognition that community nurses were coming under unprecedented pressure in work and home life and would benefit from additional support.

While the pandemic has affected everybody in the UK, its effects have impacted most directly and severely on health practitioners, who see the effects of the virus on patients both in hospital when acutely ill and in the community setting, where end-of-life care has doubled and long COVID is emerging as a long-term condition. Working patterns have been disrupted and care pathways have had to be completely rebuilt at scale. In the first waves of the pandemic, many nurses were redeployed, often into fields of practice of which they had limited previous knowledge or experience.